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EDITED BY ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION. By Ell 

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RURAL LIFE 
AND EDUCATION 

A Study of the Rural-School Problem as a 
Phase of the Rural-Life Problem 

BY 

ELLWOOD P. gUBBERLEY 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, LELAND 
STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



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COPYRIGHT, I914, BY ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



FES 12 1914 



INTRODUCTION 

A RECENT writer has stated that the rural-school 
problem would be much easier of solution if some 
writer on the subject would clearly set forth the nature 
of the problem. The suggestion was a good one, as 
most writers on the subject do not seem to see clearly 
the nature of the problem they are considering. 

The rural-school problem of to-day is a social, even 
more than an educational problem, and is the result of 
a long national evolution, coupled with recent pro- 
found changes in rural life itself. The rural-school 
problem is inseparable from the rural-life problem, and 
of which it is but a phase. Those who do most toward 
its solution will be those who see the problem clearly in 
its historical and sociological setting, and who have 
some grasp of American rural history. 

To give the problem such a setting has been the 
purpose of the first part of the book. The rural-life 
problem is there set forth in its historical develop- 
ment, and the origin and present status of the rural- 
school problem shown. With this as a basis the student 
is ready to pass to the second part of the book, which 
sets forth specifically the present rural-school problem, 
and points out the fundamental nature of the remedies 
which must be applied for its solution. The many 



VI INTRODUCTION 

plates and figures in the text have been introduced 
to give greater concreteness to the discussion. 

Such a presentation of the rural-Hfe and rural- 
educational problems as is set forth in the following 
pages might well form the basis, as a textbook, for 
normal-school classes in Rural-Life Problems, Rural- 
School Problems, or Rural Sociology, and ought to 
be of particular value to such students in properly 
orienting them for intelligent work in rural education. 
Those studying the problem in normal-school or col- 
lege classes in School Administration ought also to 
find the presentation helpful, from an administrative 
point of view. To teachers and supervisory officers in 
service the presentation ought to prove instructive 
and useful, as they are dealing with the problem at 
first hand. It is also hoped that the work will prove 
interesting and instructive to farmers, ministers, rural 
librarians, rural social-workers, and other students of 
the rural-life problem. The book has been prepared 
with a view of meeting the needs of these different 
classes of students and citizens. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

PART I. THE RURAL-LIFE PROBLEM 
INTRODUCTION 3 

CHAPTER I. Changes in the Nature of Rural 
Life 6 

Four periods of development: — 

I. The first period, up to 1830: — Early pioneer life — 
Markets — Trading — Subsistence farming. 

II. The second period, 1830-1860: — A period of trans- 
formation — Rise of commerce and manufacturing — Home 
and school. 

III. The third period, 1860-1890: — Homestead laws — 
Inventions and developments — The home-builder farmer 

— Expansion and overdevelopment — The cityward migra- 
tion — Saving in farm labor — The result. 

CHAPTER II. New Rural-Life Conditions . . 29 

IV. The fourth -period development : — Fourth -period char- 
acteristics — Importance of the changes. 

I. The urbanization of rural life: — Changes in rural liv- 
ing — New rural conveniences — Better homes — The new 
rural life — The town movement. 

II. Reorganization and commercialization of agricul- 
ture: — The U.S. Department of Agriculture — New agri- 
cultural development — New markets — Agricultural ex- 
pansion — The future — Commercialized large-scale farm- 
ing — Intensive small-scale farming — Decreasing rural 
population. 

III. Farm tenantry: — Recent increase — Recent change 
in character — New tenants — The Southern Negro tenant 

— The intermittent farm laborer — The fourth-period 
changes — Significance of the changes. 



viii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER in. Effects of these Changes on 
Rural Society and Rural Institutions ... 63 

I. New rural social life : — Early social life — New and 
larger interests — City connections — Enjoyment of life — 
Tenantry and social life — Degenerate rural life. 

II. Local government — Loss of interest in — The new 
tenants and government. — Effects of the change. 

III. The church: — The rural church — The New Eng- 
land influence — Large influence of the early church — 
Early religious intensity — The intellectual revolution — 
Social nature of the old Sunday meeting — The process of 
church decline — Dying churches — Problems which the 
church faces to-day — Great potential usefulness, neverthe- 
less — Social mission of the rural church — The teacher and 
the church problem. 

CHAPTER IV. Effects of these Changes on the 
Rural School 83 

Origin of the district school — At first a purely local 
undertaking — The demand for state schools — The second- 
period school — The early schoolmaster — Efficiency of the 
education for the time. 

Changes in rural education after about 1870 — The change 
in direction — The city-school influence — Decline in effi- 
ciency — The rural school and the fourth-period changes — 
New fourth-period demands — Gradual desertion of the 
rural school. 

Present inadequacy of the old education — Breakdown 
of the old administrative machinery — Increasing needs and 
costs — The burden of taxation — Present pUght of the rural 
school. 

CHAPTER V. Rural Life and Needs of To-Day 104 

Reconstruction and reorganization necessarj'^ — The edu- 
cational deficiency — The great rural social problem — 
Ownership vs. tenantry — Important rural economic inter- 
ests — Great rural interests are human interests. 

Fundamental rural needs: — 1. Better schools — Reten- 
tion of personality — The school and personality — 2. 
Larger life and outlook — 3. Better homes — Better kitch- 
ens — 4. A community center. Early centers for the com- 
munity life — Can the church become such now — Need of a 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS ix 

program for social work — Need for cooperation — Rural 
organizations — The rural library — The school — 5. Com- 
munity life — 'Constructive rural service — The call for 
rural service — Meaning of the country-life movement. 

CHAPTER VI. Some Worthy Examples of Rural 
Service 131 

I. Church organizations: — 1. A rural church — 2. A vil- 
lage church — 3. District nursing. 

II. Organizations for young people: — 1. Y.M.C.A. — 
2. Y.W.C.A. — 3. Boy Scouts, and Camp-fire Girls —4. 
Agricultural Clubs. 

III. The rural library — Examples of such service. 

IV. Farmers' organizations : — The Grange — The Hes- 
peria movement. 

V. Organizations for agricultural improvement — The 
farmers' institute — The county farm expert. 



PART II. THE RURAL-SCHOOL PROBLEM 

CHAPTER VH. Fundamental Needs in Rural 
Education 163 

The school and democracy — The decline of the district 
school — The result of recent changes — Rural school still 
of large importance — Poor rural schools not necessary — 
The recent criticism from without — The recent rural-life 
movement — The away-from-the-farm influence in rural 
education — Need of redirecting the school — DiflBculties to 
be encountered — The great rural-life interests — What the 
Country-Life Commission had to say — Revitalizing the 
school — Legitimate functions of the redirected school — A 
group of problems involved. 

CHAPTER VIII. Organization and Maintenance 177 

I. Types of organization: — 1. The district system — Its 
essential features — Evolution of district organization — 
District powers and duties — Curtailing the powers in the 
interests of efficiency — Where the district system rendered 
service — Chief objections to the district system — Exces- 
sive number of school oflScers — 2. The town or township 



X ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

system — The New England town system — Town vs. dis- 
trict control — The Western township system — 3. The 
county system — The county unit in evolution — Advan- 
tages of the county system — 4. The state unit. 

II. Types of maintenance : — General taxation for educa- 
tion — 1. District taxation — Changes in wealth and educa- 
tion — 2. Town or township taxation — Town and town- 
ship inequalities — 3. County taxation — Equalizing effect 
of a county school tax — 4. State taxation — General vs. 
local effort — Systems of distribution — Fundamental 
needs for rural-school progress. 

CHAPTER IX. The Teaching Equipment ... 206 

The need for better equipment: — 1. The building — The 
type — Why they persist — A common condition — Limita- 
tions to instruction — The cheap building — Fundamental 
needs in a school building — Library, science, and work 
rooms — 2. The site — The site for instruction purposes — 
The site and aesthetic training — 3. Teaching equipment — 
Needed teaching apparatus — 4. School library. 

City and country compared — Better equipment essen- • 
tial — Difficulties in the way — The need of educational 
reorganization. 

CHAPTER X. The Reorganization of Rural 
Education 226 

The multiplication of districts — The present result — 
Recent attempts to improve conditions — The root of the 
difficulty — Equal rights for the country child. 

The consolidation movement — Beginnings — The plan 
in Ohio — The essentials of the plan — Advantages of the 
plan — Disadvantages of the plan — Inaugurating the 
movement — The common plan — Township unit; stranded 
districts — The county-unit plan — The county-survey 
plan — Advantages of the county unit. 

The need for such reorganizations — Such schools natural 
community centers — A community school illustrated — A 
state reorganization. 

CHAPTER XL A New Curriculum 256 

The old curriculum — Why such instruction continues — 
Recent attempts to change these conditions — The old tradi- 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xi 

tional curriculum — Arithmetic — Grammar and language 

— Geography — Physiology and hygiene — History. 
Redirecting the school — New instructional needs — Na- 
ture study and agriculture — What can be taught — How 
such instruction works — Domestic science — Manual train- 
ing — Organized play — The new and the old compared — 
Possible correlations — How far is such redirection possible 

— The rural high school — Redirecting the high school — 
The country boy who goes to the city. 

CHAPTER Xn. A New Teacher 283 

A new teacher needed — Training and wages compared — 
The natm-al result — The remedy — Importance of the 
wage question — Present status of teacher training — New 
attention to the rural-teacher problem. 

Teachers' training classes — Nature of the instruction 
offered — Why such courses are inadequate — Probable 
future development — A suggested one-year course — Ex- 
planations of — What such a course prepares for — The 
rural high-school teacher — The call for rural leadership — 
Possibilities for usefulness — Personal attitude; steps in 
the process. 

CHAPTER Xni. A New Type of Supervision . 306 

Larger rural leadership — The county unit in evolution 

— The evolution of the school superintendency — New con- 
ception of the ofBce — Our present supervision — The sys- 
tem to blame — Present conditions in the county office — 
Why the cities draw the best — WTiere the fault lies — 
Stock arguments — The way out — What democracy 
should mean. 

A reorganized county system — The county board — The 
plan applied — The gain in supervision — Bad features it 
would eliminate. 

CHAPTER XIV. Noteworthy Examples in Ru- 
ral Education 328 

L A one-room rural school — Its building and equip- 
ment. 

II. A consolidated school — Its building, equipment, 
and work. 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

III. A county-unit school system — The county board — 
The slow development, and the present conditions — The 
work of the county superintendent — The present excellent 
county system — The five reasons for it. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 349 

INDEX 363 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing 

Primitive Conditions — Subsistence Farming 12 

A Farmhouse of the Home-Builder Period 13 

Per Cent Land in Farms forms of Total Land Area, by Coun- 
ties: 1910 30 

Per Cent Improved Land in Farms forms of Total Land Area, 

by Counties: 1910 31 

University Extension in Agriculture 58 

New Farm Workers and Owners 59 

The District School — Primitive Conditions 92 

Satisfying the Social Instincts of Youth 112 

Lads from the Farms at a College Lecture on Corn . . . 148 
An Automobile that has taught a County to read . . . 149 
One of the Local Meetings for Community Improvement , . 149 

Where the District System rendered Service 184 

A Common Type of Schoolhouse Site 216 

School Ground Decoration 217 

Different Means for transporting Pupils 236 

New Forms of Instruction, I 268 

New Forms of Instruction, II 269 

Rural High-School Instruction, I 280 

Rural High-School Instruction, II 281 

Teaching Country Children in Terms of Country Life . . 290 

A Rural School Exhibit . . . _ 304 

Boys' Session of the Farmers' Institute 305 

The Model Rural School at the Kirksville, Missouri, Normal 

School 328 

The Harlem Consolidated School, Winnebago County, 111. I . 334 
The Harlem Consolidated School, II . . . . . . .335 

The Harlem Consolidated School, III 338 

The Harlem Consolidated School, IV ...... 339 



FIGURES, DIAGRAMS, AND MAPS xiii 



FIGURES, DIAGRAMS, AND MAPS 

1. Showing Recent Rapid Growth of Urban Population . . 8 

2. An Early Home H 

3. The United States in 1850 . 17 

4. Development of Farms. East North-central Division . 19 

5. Development of Farms. West North-central Division . 20 

6. Value per Acre of Farm Property 23 

7. Development of Farms 24 

8. Distribution of Population by Decades . - . . . 25 

9. Relative Rates of Increase in Population and Production 27 

10. Per Cent Land in Farms forms of Total Land Area, by 
Counties: 1910 facing 30 

11. Per Cent Improved Land in Farms forms of Total Land 
Area, by Counties: 1910 facing 31 

12. Farm Property Values per Acre 43 

13. Black Counties in Georgia 48 

14. Per Cent of Increase in Rural Population, by States, 
1900-1910 49 

15. Changes in the Rural Population in Eight Important Agri- 
cultural States 50 

16. Acreage of all Land in Farms classified by Character of 
Tenure of Operator, 1910 -53 

17. Percentage of Foreign-born Whites, and Native Whites of 
Foreign or Mixed Parentage combined, in the Total Pop- 
ulation, 1910 57 

18. Average Value per Acre of Farm Property .... 67 

19. The Polish Farmers'-Day Poster 70 

20. Typical One-Room Rural Churches 73 

21. An Overchurched Indiana Township 78 

22. A Typical Early School Interior, I 84 

23. A Typical Early School Interior, II 86 

24. A Schoolmaster of the Old Type . . . . • -87 

25. Decreasing Percentage of Men Teachers . . . .91 

26. Increasing Cost of Education, per Pupil, in Average Daily 
Attendance 99 

27. Increasing Length of Term, in Days 101 

28. Results shown by the Census of 1910 109 

29. Percentage of Total Population in Rural Districts, 1910 112 

30. A Community Center of Large Influence, in the Wrong 
Direction ^1^ 

31. Diagram of a Country Community-Center . . . .119 

32. Union Church, Proctor, Vermont 121 

33. The Original Church 132 

34. The New Institutional Church 135 

35. Y.M.C.A. — City and Rural Development . . . .140 



xiv FIGURES, DIAGRAMS, AND MAPS 

36. Y.M.C.A. County Work ' ' . . . , :■ . . . .143 

37. A Traveling Library in a Farmhouse 147 

38. The Clinton Plan for Agricultural Betterment . . .157 

39. The School by the Wayside 164 

40. A One-Pupil Class 165 

41. A Typical Run-down Schoolhouse 167 

42. A Typical Rural School of the Better Class . -. . . 171 

43. Forms of School Organization 179 

44. Early Organization of School Districts 181 

45. Later Organization and Reorganization 182 

46. New England Towns and Western Townships compared . 187 

47. A Typical Present-Day Interior 208 

48. A Typical Weather-boarded Box 209 

49. A More Attractive Exterior 210 

50. A Rearranged Interior 211 

51. A Suggested Exterior ... 213 

52. A Model Interior for a One-Teacher Rural Schoolhouse . 214 

53. An Ohio School Site . 216 

54. Progress of Consolidation in Indiana by 1908 . . . 231 

55. Diagram of Gustavus Township, Trumbull County, Ohio, 
showing Transportation Routes 232 

56. Central Public School, Trumbull County, Ohio . . .234 

57. The Ordinary Road to Learning 236 

58. One of the Landmarks 240 

59. Where Consolidation started in Ohio 241 

60. Map showing Extent of School Consolidation in Delaware 
County, Indiana, 1908 242 

61. Stranded Districts . . . . . . . . . .244 

62. Map showing Consolidated Districts and Location of Con- 
solidated Schoolhouses in Duval County, Florida . . 245 

63. Douglas County, Minnesota 246 

64. Douglas County, Minnesota, reorganized 247 

65. Details for District XIV 248 

66. Map of Ada County, Idaho, showing the Boundaries of the 
School Districts and the Location of Rural District Schools 

" and High Schools, 1908 249 

67. Same County, illustrating a Tentative Plan of Consolida- 
tion 250 

68. A Community-Center School 252 

69. First-Floor Plan of a Community-Center School . . . 253 

70. A Reading Chart for Rural Schools 266 

71. Township Supervision in Ohio .... . . 312 

72. Basement Plan of Model Rural School 330 

73. First-Floor Plan of Model Rural School 332 

74. Attic Plan of Model Rural School 333 

75. The Harlem Consohdated School Grounds, Winnebago 
County, Illinois 337 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 
PART I 

THE RURAL-LIFE PROBLEM 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

INTRODUCTION 

To one who has given little or no attention to the 
subject, it is hard to appreciate the great revolution in 
rural life which has taken place during the past three 
quarters of a century. The changes which have been 
accomplished have been of far-reaching importance, 
and they have touched every phase of rural life. 
Almost nothing is now as it used to be; almost nothing 
is done now as it was three quarters of a century ago. 
We of to-day live in a new world — a world of which 
our grandfathers scarcely dreamed. Life everywhere 
to-day is far more complex, intricate, diflScult, and 
fruitful of both pleasure and profit than w^as that of 
which our grandfathers formed a part. The great 
changes which have taken place in living and industry 
have affected all of our people, rural and urban, but 
perhaps nowhere has the revolution in living and 
industry been of more far-reaching importance than 
to those of our people who live on the farms and in the 
little villages of our nation. 

This social and industrial revolution has profoundly 
changed the whole nature of rural life. Some rural 
communities naturally have experienced a greater 
change than others, but no community has wholly 



4 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

escaped. The revolution, too, has been so rapid, so 
extensive, and so far-reaching in its consequences that 
both rural people and rural institutions have not 
changed rapidly enough to keep pace with the de- 
mands of the new civilization. The result has been the 
development of a rural-life problem of great social and 
economic consequence, and one which involves most 
of the cherished institutions of rural society. It has 
become particularly acute, as it relates to the character 
and elements of the rural population itself, the condi- 
tions of land-ownership and farm-tenancy, rural home 
life, rural society, the rural church, and rural educa- 
tion. Taken altogether and as a whole, we call this 
collection of problems the rural-life problem. While of 
necessity referring to each of these phases of the rural- 
life problem, as they are in a way all tied up together, 
this book will have special reference to the problem as 
it relates to the rural and the village school. It may 
accordingly be considered as a treatise on that phase 
of the rural-life problem commonly known as the 
rural-school problem, concerning which much has 
been said and written within recent years. 

Like all social problems, the rural-school problem 
has had a gradual evolution and is closely related to the 
other rural-community problems, and this it will be 
our purpose first to trace and to explain. Almost any 
social problem is more understandable if we can see it 
in its historical setting, and grasp it in its relations to 
other community forces and problems. After giving 



INTRODUCTION 5 

the problem this setting, the rural-school problem as 
such will be examined in some detail, the relation 
of teachers and supervisory officers to it pointed 
out, and the remedies which must be applied to it 
explained. 



CHAPTER I 

CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 

Four periods of development. The development of 
rural life in the United States, since the beginning of 
our Republic, may be divided into four great periods, 
each, with the exception of the first, covering about 
the life of a single generation. Each of these periods 
has been characterized by important movements in 
the population, by important changes in the nature 
and methods of agriculture, and by marked changes in 
almost all of the conditions and surroundings of rural 
life. Each period, too, has been characterized by more 
fundamental and more far-reaching changes than the 
one which preceded it, until to-day the changes have 
become so great and so profound that they partake of 
the nature of an agricultural revolution. New methods 
in farming have been employed, entirely new mar- 
kets have been found, inter-communication has been 
established in ways before undreamed of, machinery 
and labor-saving devices have tremendously simplified 
and cheapened production, the old rural institutions 
are dying out, the home and its management are no 
longer the same, and opportunities for leisure and a 
taste for higher pursuits have been developed to a 
degree which would have seemed impossible even half 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 7 

a century ago. It is certainly no exaggeration to say 
that, in all of the time from the crusades to the begin- 
ning of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, 
no such profound and far-reaching changes in the 
methods of agriculture or the conditions of rural life 
were accomplished as have been accomplished in the 
United States during the last seventy-five to one 
hundred years. 

The rural-school problem, which is to be the special 
theme of this book, has arisen as a result of these 
many and far-reaching changes, and the difficulties 
which now confront the rural school will be under- 
stood much better if we first trace these great historical 
changes in rural life, and show the relation of these 
changes to the problem in hand. Accordingly we shall 
first sketch this development, state the chief charac- 
teristics of each of the four great periods which we 
have said that rural life in the United States may 
be divided into, and then state the conditions which 
confront rural society to-day. 

I. UP TO 1830 

The first period of development. The first period in 
our agricultural development may be said to have 
extended up to about 1830 or 1835. In a way it was 
an extension of the colonial period, and of the system 
of farming and of rural life then in vogue. Nearly all 
life at the time our National Government was estab- 
lished was rural, and nearly every one lived on farms 



8 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

or in little villages. But 3.35 per cent of the total pop- 
ulation, or but one person in thirty, lived in a city of 
8000 inhabitants or over in 1790, and but 3.97 per cent 




Fig, 1. SHOWING RECENT RAPID GROWTH OF URBAN POPULATION 

in 1800. Still more, there were but six such cities in the 
whole of the thirteen original states until 1810, and the 
largest city in the United States had less than 75,000 
inhabitants. Even in such a city all life was far simpler 
then than in a small Western county-seat town to-day. 
Almost everywhere then the people lived on little 
farms, and their chief object was to clear the tract. 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 9 

develop the land, and obtain a living from the soil. 
There were few markets, and these were local to a high 
degree. A little wheat was sold in the Middle Colo- 
nies for shipment to England, as was tobacco in the 
Southern. Rice and indigo were also raised for export 
in the Carolinas and in Georgia. Even these, though, 
could not be sold except when raised near to the sea- 
coast, as the almost complete absence of roads and the 
difficulties of transportation made a market elsewhere 
impossible. The division of labor had not as yet made 
much headway, either in industry or in agriculture. 
Families lived off of the land, and produced by hand 
nearly all that they ate or wore. If near a village or a 
crossroads store, a part of the surplus of certain crops 
was exchanged, by barter, for certain manufactured 
articles. Life was exceedingly simple, and difficult as 
well. 

Almost immediately after the establishment of peace 
with Great Britain, a strong westward movement of 
the population began. New England people had 
already settled New York and northeastern Pennsyl- 
vania, and men from Virginia and the Carolinas had 
moved westward into Kentucky and Tennessee. Soon 
this movement extended farther westward. First 
Ohio, then northern Indiana and Illinois, southern 
Michigan and Wisconsin, and, still later, Iowa were 
settled by people of New England stock. Kentucky, 
Tennessee, southern Indiana and Illinois, and Missouri 
were settled by people from Virginia and the Carolinas, 



10 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

while Alabama and Mississippi were a result of south- 
ern migrations, chiefly from Georgia. The beginnings 
of the national land policy after 1785, after which 
time farms in the wilderness were sold to settlers at 
low prices,^ greatly stimulated migration and helped 
to settle the new territory. After 1820 a constant 
stream of wagons poured into the wilderness, and by 
1821 nine new states had been added to the Union, all 
carved from these Western lands, while the frontier 
had been pushed out to and beyond the Mississippi. 
Four more states were added from this Western do- 
main by 1848, completing the Union out to and includ- 
ing the first tier of states west of the Mississippi, with 
the single exception of Minnesota. 

Early pioneer life. Life in the new land was full of 
hardships, and one of unremitting toil. Forests had to 
be cut down, stumps burned out, swamps drained, and, 
to the westward, the thick sod of the prairies broken. 
Farm life west of the Alleghanies became a repetition 
of colonial life to the east of the mountains. It was a 
period of intense struggle with the untamed forces of 
nature, and the pressing demands on the new settlers 
for food and shelter for the family and stock left little 
time for any leisure employment. Every member of 
the family had to work and work hard, and every 
member was made useful from a very early age. The 
agriculture was largely experimental, and was carried 
on by the primitive methods and with the primitive 

1 At first fixed at $2 per acre, but after 1821 fixed at $1.25 per acre. 




CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 11 

implements of the times. The ox and a rude form 
of plow were about all of the labor-saving devices 
at hand. The home was of the simplest kind, and 
the furnishings exceedingly primitive. A log cabin, 
chinked with 
mud ; an open €>4c^^ 
fireplace, with a 
stick-and-clay 
chimney; home- 
made furniture 
and simple equip- 
ment were the 
characteristics of 
the times. Of fuel 
and food there 

was plenty, and the family raised and prepared al- 
most all that was eaten or worn. Corn was the chief 
crop at first, and cattle and hogs the chief animals 
raised. The people laid by corn for winter; smoked 
their own meats ; preserved such few poor fruits of the 
time as they cared for or had the means to keep; made 
their own lard, butter, candles, and clothing; manu- 
factured sugar and syrup from the forest maples; 
evaporated salt from the salt springs or *' licks "; and 
ground their corn in rude hand-operated mills. Of 
intercommunication there was little; of comforts and 
pleasures, very few; of doctors and nurses, almost 
none. It was the rude and primitive existence of the 
sturdy pioneer; and the hard work, the difficulties of 



Fig. 2. AN EARLY HOME 



n RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the struggle with the untamed forces of nature in a 
new land, the lack of outlook, and the loneliness and 
isolation of the life must have borne hard on many a 
man and woman. 

Markets. Of markets there were practically none, 
except near the seaboard, and agriculture everywhere 
was in what has been termed the self-sufficing stage of 
its development. A farmer could raise enough for his 
own needs, but there was little chance to dispose of 
any surplus. Cotton in the South, due to the perfec- 
tion of the cotton-gin, was an exception, and had 
become a staple crop; and the numerous rivers of the 
South made the marketing of cotton relatively easy 
for plantations not too far removed from the seaboard. 
Little, though, could be sent from the Northwest over 
the Alleghanies. In Kentucky and southern Ohio some 
cattle were raised for market, but to drive them to 
Baltimore or Philadelphia was something of an under- 
taking, and consumed nearly all of the profits. The 
building of the National Turnpike to St. Louis, 
through Zanesville and Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, 
Indianapolis, and Terre Haute, Indiana; and Vandalia, 
Illinois, opened up somewhat a new territory, while 
the opening of the Erie Canal through New York 
State, in 1825, provided a new and easier route for the 
transportation of grains from the West. Wheat from 
the interior could now be shipped, via Lake Erie and 
the canal to New York, for sale in the Eastern and 
European markets. Wheat now displaced corn as the 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 13 

chief money crop on farms not too far removed from 
connecting navigable water. 

Trading. Even up to 1830 there were but twenty- 
six cities in the United States of over 8000 inhabitants, 
and fourteen of these had less than 12,000 of popu- 
lation. A number of small towns were developing in 
the new West, however, and these were rapidly becom- 
ing centers for local trade. The crossroads store was 
also becoming common, and in it were beginning to 
be found a number of the new manufactured articles. 
There was little money as yet in circulation, especially 
in the West, and business was carried on chiefly by 
barter. Salt, bears' grease, pelts, and corn possessed 
fixed values. Even taxes were paid in produce; such 
units as half of a beef, a quarter of venison, a peck of 
corn, and a half-peck of salt were legal tender. Grist- 
mills and sawmills, run by water-power, were begin- 
ning to supersede hand mills, where grinding and saw- 
ing were now done " on shares." Shoes were soon 
substituted for moccasins, and woolen and linen cloth 
for buckskin. The tanning of hides became an indus- 
try, and harnessmakers, wagonmakers, wheelwrights, 
and carpenters began to be in demand. Better barns 
and better farmhouses began to be erected, especially 
by the New England people, and life in the wilderness, 
by the end of the first agricultural period, began to 
lose something of its harshness and forbidding aspect. 
The rich farms of Ohio began to replace the heavily 
timbered wilderness which met the early pioneers. 



14 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

II. 1830-1860 

The second period of development. T-he second 
period in the development of American rural life may 
be said to have begun about 1830 to 1835, and to have 
extended up to the beginning of the Civil War, though 
to the westward the story of the settling of Ohio and 
Kentucky was repeated during this second period. 
During this period farming passed from the local and 
self-sufficing to the commercial stage; cities and manu- 
facturing began to develop rapidly; labor-saving de- 
vices began to be used on the farms; new peoples came; 
and the coming of the railroads changed the whole 
character of farming. Intercommunication began to 
take the place of the former isolation; civilization 
began to go with subsistence; and intelligent farming 
began to supersede an unintelligent dependence upon 
luck. Products now began to be grown for the market; 
the steam railroad and the steamboat provided an 
easy and cheap means of transportation ; and the flood 
of farm products from the great interior now, for the 
first time, began seriously to disturb the economic 
equilibrium of the East and of the Old World. Agri- 
cultural societies were organized; agricultural fairs 
began to be held; agriculture as a subject began to be 
discussed; a substantial effort began to be made to 
improve the breeds of live stock; and new fruits and 
orchard stock began to be introduced. New migratory 
movements from the worked-out farms of the East to 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 15 

the richer lands of the West now began. This move- 
ment soon carried population far out onto the prairies. 

A period of transformation. The period was one of 
rapid expansion and transformation. At its beginning 
nearly everything done on the farm was done by hand 
labor. Plowing, harrowing, and the drawing of loads 
formed almost the only exceptions. Crops were sown 
and harvested only with the greatest of effort. At the 
end of the period most of the epoch-making inventions 
in agricultural machinery had been perfected and 
were being introduced. The mower was patented as 
early as 1831, the reaper in 1833, the thresher by 1840, 
the separator in 1850, and the steam-thresher by 1860. 
The machine drill superseded hand-sowing; the two- 
horse cultivator superseded the hoe; and the faster 
horse superseded the slow ox. By 1865 every process 
in the raising of wheat, and every process in the raising 
of corn, except husking, was done by machinery. 

Specialization in crops now began to supersede 
general subsistence farming. Cotton rapidly jumped to 
a place of first importance in the South. As this crop 
demands a quantity of cheap labor at certain seasons 
only, and is best handled on large plantations, there 
was a large exodus of the poorer Southern whites to 
Kentucky, Missouri, and still farther west. The repeal 
of the English Corn Laws in 1846, by which the tariff 
was removed from imported foodstuffs, still further 
stimulated agricultural development in the United 
States. The coming of thousands of educated Ger- 



16 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

mans, who took up farms and settled in the upper 
Mississippi Valley after 1848, also further stimulated 
agricultural production. Butter- and cheese-making 
were added to the list of agricultural industries after 
about 1850, as was also truck-farming in certain 
regions. Prices for all kinds of farm products increased 
rapidly, making farming a much more profitable 
industry than it had been before. 

Rise of commerce and manufacturing. The develop- 
ment of cities and manufacturing now began. At the 
beginning of the period there were no railways, and 
all transportation was by pack-train, horse and wagon, 
or canal-boat. By 1850 the steam roads offered con- 
tinuous rail travel from North Carolina to Maine 
along the coast, had reached into the heart of the 
cotton belt of the South, to Buffalo on Lake Erie, and 
from the western end of Lake Erie to Cincinnati and 
Chicago. By 1860 the steam railways had been built 
west into Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, and thirty 
thousand miles of rails were carrying agricultural 
products from the interior, and manufactured pro- 
ducts from the seaboard cities back to the interior. 
Cotton was king in the South, corn and winter wheat 
in the North, and commerce and manufacturing in the 
East. The telegraph had been perfected in 1844, and 
fifty thousand miles of wire were carrying messages by 
1860. Edge tools were now made in this country. The 
platform scale and the sewing-machine were coming 
into use. Kerosene lamps were in their beginning. 



18 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Improved cookstoves were beginning to be used, and 
friction matches superseded the flint. The coal meas- 
ures west of the Alleghanies had been opened, and 
anthracite in the East had been put to use. The great 
work of steam had begun, and the chimneys of factor- 
ies were rising over the land. 

Home and school. A little more leisure had come 
into the home as well, and the school of books began, 
in part, to supersede the school of practical experience 
for the children. Farmhouses and barns were better 
built, homes were made more attractive, farms were 
better tilled and more valuable, gravel roads began to 
supersede the corduroy, and rural life generally began 
to reflect the changes and improvements in the 
methods of living. Numerous little towns, the nuclei 
of future cities, were springing up all through the 
upper Mississippi Valley, as they had done a genera- 
tion earlier in the Middle Atlantic States. Notwith- 
standing these changes, though, rural life was still 
simple, and travel to any distance was the exception 
rather than the rule. 

III. 1860-1890 

Third period of development. The third period in 
the development of American rural life began about 
1860, and extended up to about 1890 or 1895. It was 
characterized by the greatest agricultural expansion 
the world had ever known. The Government home- 
stead laws of 1862 and 1864, under which a farm of 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 19 



one hundred and sixty acres was given to any person 
who would actually settle on the land and live there 
for five years, greatly stimulated the development. 
Up to 1890, quarter-section farms to the extent of 
233,043,939 acres, an area six times as large as New 
England, six and one half times as large as Illinois, and 

0/ 

10 





Percentage of total Land Area :- 








Ea8t> 


orth-Central I 


Mvision 


J 





\ 




— — VX^ ^ t| 


^^ 


SE^— ' ^fe"V~"' 


^Bgz: 




~- 


^^ta 


'----;; 


r-^--^— ^ 



50 

^ 40 
30 
20 
10 




Fig. 4. DEVELOPMENT OF FARMS 

more than a half larger than the German Empire, 
were claimed as homesteads by new settlers. The 
opportunity to get a cleared farm of rich land and 
without price soon attracted great numbers of the 
more intelligent and hardy peasants from other lands, 
and a great influx of Canadians, English, Irish, Ger- 
mans, and Scandinavians came into the new states of 
the upper Mississippi Valley. Many of those who had 
settled earlier east of the Mississippi also sold their 



20 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



farms and went to the West, while the sons of many 
others went, leaving their parents behind. The effect 
of this movement on the development of farms is seen 
from the charts on this and the preceding page. East 
of the Mississippi the settlement and improvement 
now proceeded more slowly, while west of the river the 

















Percenta 
West r 


ge of total Land Area:- 
Jortb-Central Division 




^ 








A 


^ 




y^^'^ 








^1 


.t^ 




B 


^^-t^ 




1 










^ 




S 


<-— 1 


^ — - - 


^^m 




1 ^ 





Fig. 5. DEVELOPMENT OF FARMS 

settlement and improvement of the land were very 
rapid. It was also seen in the development of new 
states. Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, the two Dakotas, 
Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington were 
added as states by 1890, — all essentially agricultural 
states and all, with the exception of Colorado and 
Washington, without a large city in them. 

Inventions and developments. The first trans- 
continental railway was completed in 1869, and by 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RUKAL LIFE 21 

1890 five additional railway lines linked the West to 
the East. These, with their branches and feeders, 
gathered up the wheat, corn, and cattle of the West 
and carried it to Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, 
and Boston for shipment to other lands. The United 
States soon became the granary of Europe, and 
agriculture became a large and an important business. 
By 1880 the United States was the greatest shipper of 
grains and meats in the world. The invention of the 
twine-binder, about 1880, settled the labor problem 
involved in harvesting and made wheat-growing easier 
and more profitable; while the patenting of the roller- 
process of making flour made spring wheat useful, and 
settled and developed the great Northwest. Great 
cattle ranges also were developed in the then new 
West, and the perfecting of the refrigerator car in 1869 
made the shipment of dressed beef both possible and 
profitable. The beginning of the export of dressed 
meats, in 1870, further developed the cattle industry. 
The perfection of the Babcock milk -tester and the 
centrifugal cream -separator, about 1880, gave a new 
impetus to the dairy industry, and the application of 
the cold-storage principle shortly after added materi- 
ally to the farmer's range of markets. Fruit-growing 
also became an important branch of agriculture during 
this third period. New attention was now given to the 
securing of better breeds of stock, and we also note the 
beginnings of an extension of the principle of selection 
to both seeds and trees. 



22 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The home-builder farmer. The many labor-saving 
inventions introduced not only made farm life easier 
and more profitable, but the great increase in the ease 
of communication made it less isolated and more 
attractive. Turnpikes and bridges were built by the 
counties, better houses and barns were built by the 
farmers, and many improvements to the land were 
made. Farm land began to increase rapidly in value, 
after the depression of the early eighties due to over- 
development, and the successful farmer began to ac- 
cumulate a bank account, and to cultivate relations 
with the adjoining town or with the growing city which 
formed the county seat. He and his wife dressed bet- 
ter, gave their children more advantages, and began to 
enjoy some of the luxuries as well as the necessities of 
life. He remained, however, essentially a home-builder, 
loyal to his country neighborhood, and treasuring his 
rural friendships. His pride was in his broad and well- 
kept acres, his horses and stock, his home, his barns 
and machinery, and his family. He was strong, 
virile, conscious of his personal worth, opinionated, 
and with a keen sense for values, politics, and often for 
religion. Such he continues to-day, in many parts of 
our land. 

Expansion and overdevelopment. The result of 
these many inventions and developments was a tre- 
mendous expansion of agriculture, not only in the 
new lands to the West, but in the older states to the 
East as well. Almost simultaneously there was a great 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 23 

development of wheat -growing in California and 
Washington, in Russia, and in Argentine, as well as 
other important agricultural developments elsewhere. 
The steam-train and the steamship gathered up the 
products and delivered them quickly in the world's 
great markets. The result was a great disturbance in 

Value 
100 



















Value per Acre of Farm Property. 
United States as a whole 


















J 


5 




3 \ 


\ \ 


\ \ 




\ y^ 








^ 




S^^,^^ 















Fig. 6. VALUE OF FARM PROPERTY 

economic conditions: for a time an overproduction, a 
fall in prices of both products and lands, and, for 
a period, much discontent among the farming class. 
This was most marked in the decade of the eighties. 
Gradually, however, these conditions changed. With 
the exhaustion of the free Government lands, the 
great increase in population, both at home and abroad, 
a readjustment of vocations and methods of distribu- 
tion, and an increasing consumption of foodstuffs per 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



capita, due to better living, the prices for both lands 
and foodstuffs have recently experienced a remarkable 
rise in values, and farming has recently become a very 
profitable undertaking. 

The cityward migration. Along with these many 
changes during this third period, another of the most 



















rcrccntage of total Land Area:- 
Unitcd States as a whole. 
















^ 




i 








^^rattoL^ 


-^ 










i 




^^^a 






h 


g^^a 





Fig. 7. DEVELOPMENT OF FARMS 

far-reaching significance for country life now began to 
manifest itself strongly. It had its beginnings much 
earlier, but became marked now for the first time. 
This was the tendency of country boys to leave the 
farm and go to the rising cities. The fascination of 
the city and the large prizes which might be won there 
began to attract the strong and the self-reliant among 
the young men of the country. This tendency grew 
with time, and finally resulted in a great migration 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 25 



cityward. In some states, particularly in New York 
and New England, it led to the abandonment of many 
farms, while to the West it led to the draining-off of 
many of the most promising young men of the farming 
class. The lack of opportunity and the lack of social 





























■" 


In Cities Qf 8.000 or over 

In smaller Incorporated Places. 

(Estimated before 1881) ) 
lu Rural Districts. 






























































^ 






















y< 


Mmt 




^ ' \ 


















4;?--'^ ' ^ 


^i.-,=i: 


m 












- -~zr^ 




TifiijSSSiSK?:! 


^ 




^■% 










^R 


nmSlinirT 


J3 


^^g 


^A^^^Mm/m^^ 


■ 


■ 


■ 


"i 



100 

95 

90 

85 

80 

75 

70 

65 

60 

55' 

50 

45 

40 



Fig. 8. DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION BY DECADES 

Percentage of the total population of the United States at each census in cities, 
towns, and rural districts. Note the growth of the city after about 1850. 

prestige in the country also sent many of the best of 
the country girls to the city as well. By 1890 the rural 
conditions were such, due in part to a temporary over- 
development of agriculture throughout the world, and 
in part to the tendency of the education provided by 
the rural school, that boys and girls of energy and 



26 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

ambition left the farm for the city at the first opportu- 
nity.^ Farming as a life career at that time appealed 
strongly to but few. The result was manifested in the 
rapid growth of the cities after 1890, and in the partial 
depletion of many rural communities. 

Another class of country people now began to leave 
the rural districts for the cities. With the rapid intro- 
duction of machinery and labor-saving devices during 
this third period, the farmer was able to dispense with 
many of his former " hands." Fewer laborers were 
needed to do the work which once required the labor 
of many, while the introduction of complicated and 
expensive machinery demanded that the man who ran 
it should have a good operative head. Many of these 
former *' hands " belonged to that class of less intel- 
ligent and less progressive rural people, who neither 
owned nor leased land, but were content to work for 
others. These now had to go to the city to find a 
market for their labor. The result was to send from 
the country to the city most of its poor, improvident, 
and shiftless people, as well as many of its stronger 
personalities. 

Saving in farm labor. The saving in human labor 
by machinery was very great. In the case of nine 
important farm crops, the increase in efficiency of a 
single man, between 1830 and 1895, has been estimated 



1 The census of 1890 showed that 66 per cent of the area of 
Illinois was then diminishing in population, 43 per cent of the area 
of Iowa, 61 per cent of Ohio, and 83 per cent of New York. 



CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF RURAL LIFE 27 

at 500 per cent, while in the case of barley it has been 
estimated at 2240 per cent. From 1840 to 1900 in the 
case of eight important cereals, the increase in the rate 
of production was twice as fast as the rate of increase 
in the total population. Harvesting, under the old 
methods, required more than eight times the number 
of laborers now required, while threshing required 

1840 1 P I I Rural B City 

1900 1 

Increase in Population 



1840 1 
1900 f 



Increase in Production - 8 Cereals 

Fig. 9. RELATIVE RATES OF INCREASE IN POPULATION AND 
PRODUCTION 



from fifteen to thirty times the present number. 
Figures from the United States Department of Agri- 
culture show that in 1855 the amount of labor ex- 
pended in producing a bushel of corn in the United 
States was four hours and thirty -five minutes. Under 
modern conditions the amount of time required is only 
forty-one minutes. With wheat the difference is even 
more marked. In 1855 three hours of labor were 
expended on each bushel of wheat ; at present a bushel 
of wheat requires only ten minutes of labor. In the 
case of a farm worker it has been estimated that his 



28 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

efficiency was still further increased 86 per cent by 
machinery between 1870 and 1900. 

The result. All of these changes have meant not 
only an increase in the profitableness of farming, but a 
great amelioration in the conditions surrounding farm 
life as well. They have also created a demand for 
larger intelligence, wider knowledge, and larger ability 
on the part of the farmer. He has been able to make 
farming a business instead of merely a means of sub- 
sistence, and to purchase many of the more desirable 
modern conveniences and comforts to replace the 
primitive pioneer conditions. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Explain what is meant by the self-sufficing stage of agricultural 
development. 

2. Where was the Erie Canal ? 

3. Why did wheat supersede corn as the money crop after the 
opening of the Erie Canal ? 

4. Explain what is meant by the statement that during this period 
farming passed from the self-sufficing to the commercial stage. 

5. Explain why the coming of the railroads changed the whole 
character of farming. 

6. Contrast farm life in 1830 with that of 1860. 

7. Contrast these conditions again with conditions in 1890. 

8. Contrast the market facilities of 1850 and 1890, and show the 
effect of these on farming as an industry. 

9. Contrast the home-life conditions of 1850 and 1890, and point 
out how such changes naturally lead to a demand for more and 
for better educational facilities. 

10. Why would the cityward migration naturally draw off both the 
best and the poorest of rural people ? 

11. What effect would this have on rural life and progress ? 

12. Without machinery could farming ever have developed into a 
business undertaking .' 

13. What per cent of your state is in farms ? Improved farms ? 



CHAPTER II 

NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 

The fourth-period development. The changes which 
mark the fourth period in the agricultural develop- 
ment of the United States began about 1890, and are 
still in process of evolution. These changes are not by 
any means universal as yet, as in many rural communi- 
ties the conditions which marked the third period still 
prevail. Sometimes even the second-period conditions 
are still found in isolated localities. Each year, though, 
sees new regions invaded by the changes which have 
marked what we call the fourth period of our agri- 
cultural development, and an intensification of these 
changes. The change to the fourth-period conditions 
has been most marked in regions of one-crop farming, 
in the vicinity of large cities, and particularly in the 
states of the upper Mississippi Valley. These changes 
are not confined to any one locality, though, for one 
finds such conditions manifesting themselves from 
Maine to California, and from Minnesota to Florida. 
The chief reason why the upper Mississippi Valley has 
been most affected is that it is the center of the agri- 
cultural life of the nation. This is well shown by the 
two maps which face pages 30 and 81 of this chap- 
ter, and by the table inserted below. All of the great 
staple farm crops, except rice, tobacco, and cotton, 



30 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



TABLE, SHOWING FARMING CONDITIONS IN FIFTEEN 
LEADING AGRICULTURAL STATES 



State 



New York 

Ohio 

Indiana . . 
Illinois. . . 
Iowa 

Michigan . 
Wisconsin 
Minnesota 

Missouri . 
Nebraska . 
Kansas.. . 
Oklahoma 

Georgia . . 
Alabama . 
Texas. . . . 



Per cent 
of total 
population 
in rural 
districts 


Per cent 
of lands 
in farms 


Average 
size of 
farms, 

in acres 


21.2 


72.2 


102.2 


44.1 


92.5 


88.6 


57.6 


92.3 


98.8 


38.3 


90.7 


129.1 


69.4 


95.4 


156.3 


52.8 


51.5 


91.5 


57.0 


59.6 


118.9 


59.0 


53.5 


177.3 


57.5 


78.6 


124.8 


73.9 


78.6 


297.8 


70.8 


82.9 


244.0 


80.7 


65.0 


151.7 


79.4 


71.7 


92.6 


82.7 


63.2 


78.9 


75.9 


67.0 


269.1 



Average 
value of 
farm land, 
per acre 



$32.13 
53.34 
62.86 
95.02 
82.58 

32.48 
43.30 
36.82 

41.80 
41.80 
35.45 
22.49 

13.74 
10.46 
14.53 



are raised chiefly in the upper Mississippi Valley 
States. The central points for the number of farms, 
for improved farm acreage, for farm-land values, for 
the production of corn, and for gross farm income are 
all located in the State of Illinois; while the centers 
for wheat and oat production are across the river in 
Iowa. New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa are 
the largest dairy-products producers; Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri are the greatest swine and 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 31 

domestic-fowl states; and Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri 
are the center of the draft-animal industry. As a 
recent writer has put it, this central region is fairly 
dripping agricultural fatness.^ Excepting cotton in the 
South and cattle in Texas, no other agricultural region 
in the United States approaches it in wealth. Because 
this is the case, the changes to the fourth-period con- 
ditions have been rendered easier here. 

Fourth-period characteristics. The most prominent 
characteristics of the fourth period in the agricultural 
development of the United States have been three: 
(1) the gradual urbanization of rural life; (2) the 
reorganization and commercializing of the agricultural 
industry; and (3) the partial, and in some districts the 
complete, substitution of a system of farm tenantry 
for farm management by the native owner. Farming 
has become so profitable in the richer agricultural 
regions that it has now become a commercial business, 
to be managed along strictly business lines. We will 
consider each of these fourth-period characteristics in 
order. 

I. THE GRADUAL URBANIZATION OF RURAL LIFE 

Changes in rural living. During the past two 
decades very important changes have taken place in 
the conditions surrounding rural life itself. Except in 
sparsely settled regions, or where primitive conditions 

1 "The Heart of the United States," by James P. Monroe, in 
Atlantic Monthly, September, 1908. 



32 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

still persist, the old isolation has practically ended, and 
many of the conveniences and comforts enjoyed by city 
people are now found in the better farm homes. This 
change in the conditions of living has taken place chiefly 
since 1890, and has been particularly marked during the 
past five to ten years. Everywhere there has been a 
marked softening of the harsh conditions and limita- 
tions which once surrounded rural life. As a result, in 
the wealthier and more progressive farming regions, 
the well-to-do farmer of to-day can provide in his 
home almost all of the comforts and conveniences 
enjoyed by his city relations. 

New rural conveniences. The telephone, twenty 
years ago but little used, has recently come to be 
almost one of the necessities of a farmer's life and 
work. A generation ago, if he broke part of a piece of 
machinery, needed information as to markets, or had 
sickness in the family, there was nothing to do but 
hitch up a horse and drive to town. To-day with the 
local-exchange and long-distance telephone, he may 
order the piece of machinery by catalogue number, 
find out about the markets or the loading of cars, or 
summon a doctor or nurse. If he needs to telegraph 
to Boston or Chicago on business, or to his relatives in 
Dakota or California, he can telephone his message, 
have a night letter sent, and have a reply telephoned 
back to him when received, and have it all charged 
to him on his monthly telephone bill. The rural-mail 
delivery and the parcels post have also come to his 



NEW RURAI^LIFE CONDITIONS 33 

assistance. Instead of getting mail or a package or 
posting a letter only when the work or the weather 
would permit of his going to town, the rural-mail 
delivery wagon comes to his gate each day to bring 
letters, papers, and packages, and to take them away. 
With a Sears-Roebuck or a Wanamaker catalogue and 
a bank check, he and his wife can supply their needs 
without leaving the house, and have the goods de- 
livered by parcels post at their door. Instead of, or 
to supplement, the local weekly newspaper, its inside 
filled with '* boiler-plate" and its outside with local 
advertisements and news, the farmer now receives his 
daily metropolitan newspaper, with its news of the 
world, national and state politics, and market reports. 
The monthly magazines, with their club rates and pre- 
miums, have also found their way into the farmer's 
home, and serve to create new interests for the family 
and to weaken the old local attachments. 

Better homes. The farmer's home, too, has greatly 
changed in the past two decades. New and better 
farmhouses everywhere meet the eye. The railroads, 
during the last fifteen years, have done a large busi- 
ness in carrying lumber for building purposes from 
Washington and Oregon to the farming sections of 
the western half of the upper Mississippi Valley, while 
the eastern half has obtained its supply from sources 
farther east. This lumber has gone into new farm- 
houses, barns, and fences. The perfection of the long- 
distance transmission line for electric current and the 



34 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

building of power lines through the country, have 
introduced electricity into the homes for lighting and 
for power, and the electric light has become so cheap, 
so convenient, and so desirable that farmers are mak- 
ing connections whenever they can be had. Long- 
distance high-pressure gas lines are also to be found in 
an increasing number of the more thickly populated 
regions, and in places gas is being introduced for cook- 
ing. A furnace in the house is now becoming a common 
convenience. With a water tank, a gasoline engine or 
an electric pump, or even a windmill, running water 
and bathroom conveniences are possible and are now 
found in many of the newer farm homes, while the 
perfection of the septic tank has settled the problem 
of sewage disposal. 

As a rule, the newer farmhouses are much more 
attractive and are much better arranged than the 
farmhouses of a generation ago. Better furniture, 
better table appointments, and better equipment 
generally have been felt necessary, even where the 
house itself has not been improved. Grand Rapids 
upholstered furniture, white table-linen, Rogers 
Brothers silverware, and " hangings " have displaced 
the simpler furniture, red tablecloth, Sheffield knives, 
and lace curtains of a generation ago; pianos and 
gramophones have taken the place of the earlier 
organs and accordions; and the latest rag-time or the 
opera by Caruso or Calve now take the place of the 
Gospel Hymns, once so commonly played and sung. 



NEW RURAI^LIFE CONDITIONS S5 

The work done in the farmhouse has also greatly 
decreased. Both under and outer clothing are bought 
now, and not made. Cooperative creameries make the 
butter and the cheese. Laundry wagons not uncom- 
monly call for part of the washing. Even fruits, Jellies, 
and canned goods are frequently bought at the town 
store. 

The new rural life. The farmer's life, too, has 
materially changed. The old isolation and the narrow 
provincialism are rapidly ending. He and his wife are 
no longer so markedly *' of the country." They, and 
particularly their children, dress much better than 
formerly. The family is no longer limited in motion 
by the traveling ability of its horse. The interurban 
trolley will now take them to town almost any hour. 
The automobile, too, which is found in greatest rela- 
tive numbers in the farming states, ^ has further ex- 
tended the farmer's ability to travel. A trip to town, 
which once consumed the better part of a day, is now 
only a matter of an hour or so. It is easy to go in in the 
evening, after the day's work is done. The moving- 
picture show and the theater, once unknown, now 
offer their attractions. 

^ At the close of 1912 the number of automobiles registered in 
the different states showed the following ratios to the total popu- 
lation : — 



Massachusetts 


I to 69 


Ohio 


1 to 75 


Wisconsin 


[ to 96 


Connecticut 


I to 64 


Indiana 


1 to 5-2 


Minnesota 


I to 74 


New Jersey ] 


to 50 


Illinois 


1 to 83 


North Dakota 


I to 05 


New York ] 


I to 89 


Iowa 


1 to 50 


South Dakota 


I to 39 


Pennsylvania ] 


to 130 


Nebraska 


1 to 37 


California 


I to 28 


Michigan ] 


to 72 


Kansas 


1 to 91 


Texas 


I to 156 



36 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The town movement. The most immediate effect of 
these many and almost revolutionary changes in the 
nature of life on the farm is that the farmer soon loses 
the home feeling, and begins to spend his income in 
the enjoyment of life. The economic success of the 
farmer too often proves to be his undoing. Soon the 
attractions and still greater advantages of the city 
attract him, and his family urge it, to such an extent, 
that he rents his farm to tenants, often closing his 
farmhouse entirely, and the whole family moves to 
town to enjoy its social and its educational advantages. 
The earlier movement, in the third period, was chiefly 
one of individuals; now, in the fourth period, it is 
chiefly one of whole families. In the upper part of 
the Mississippi Valley, in the richest of our farming 
regions, this cityward movement has become so 
marked that in some portions of it entire townships 
have been deserted by the old farming stock. This 
family movement first began about 1890, but within 
the past ten years it has gone on at a rapidly increasing 
rate. 

II. THE REORGANIZATION AND COMMERCIALIZING 
OF AGRICULTURE 

A new type of agriculture. This began much earlier, 
but did not become a strongly marked tendency until 
after about 1890. Since 1900 the change has become 
very marked. It has been caused by the general intro- 
duction of scientific machinery, methods, and processes ; 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 37 

by the development of farm managers, capable of 
handling farm business on a large scale; and by a 
world-wide increase in the demand for foodstuffs, 
which has materially increased the value of all farm 
products. These influences have recently combined to 
make farming very profitable. 

The introduction of scientific methods and processes 
is due chiefly to the great work of our state agricultural 
colleges. These were first provided for by the famous 
Morrill Land-Grant Bill, passed by Congress in 1862.^ 
A number had begun instruction by 1870, and by 1885 
many of these had become effective educational insti- 
tutions. In 1887 Congress granted further national 
aid 2 to establish an agricultural experiment station in 
connection with each of these state institutions, and 
in 1890 2 the National Government granted still fur- 
ther additional aid to each state for the maintenance of 
these colleges. The results of these grants have been 
the creation of fifty ^ such institutions for the instruc- 

1 Each state was given 30,000 acres of public land for each Senator 
and Representative in Congress, to be used to endow a college of 
agriculture and mechanical arts. The grants varied from 90,000 
acres to Delaware, to 990,000 acres to New York. In all, count- 
ing other recent land grants to new states for the same purpose, 
11,367,832 acres, an area one half as large as the State of Indiana, 
have been given to found and endow the agricultural colleges. 

2 The sum of $15,000 a year to each state, since increased to 
$30,000 a year, to maintain an agricultural experiment station in 
connection with the college of agriculture. 

^ The sum of $15,000 a year to each state, since increased to 
$50,000, to help maintain the agricultural college. 

* One in Hawaii and one in Porto Rico, as well as one in each of 
the states. 



38 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tion of white students, and sixteen, in the South, for 
the instruction of colored students as well. Such in- 
stitutions as Cornell University, and the state uni- 
versities of Illinois, Wisconsin, and California stand 
as types of the best of these institutions, and these 
have been worth to these states hundreds of times 
what they have cost. 

The Department of Agriculture. Another influence 
of fundamental importance in the development of 
scientific methods and processes and in improving 
farm life has been the great work of the United States 
Department of Agriculture. This was established as 
a bureau in 1862, and created a department, with a 
secretary in the Cabinet of the President, in 1889, Its 
real development dates from about this time, while 
under the administration of Secretary Wilson, who 
was appointed in 1897 and continued in office until 
1913, the development was very rapid. From a de- 
partment of 488 employees and costing $1,134,481 in 
1889, it grew to one of 12,704 employees and costing 
$21,537,781 in 1912. The work of this department has 
been far-reaching, and it has rendered greater service 
in advancing the public welfare than any other depart- 
ment of the National Government. The agricultural 
colleges have been stimulated into new activity ; crops 
of all kinds have been improved; new methods of 
farming have been pointed out ; new varieties of grain, 
trees, and stock have been introduced; diseases have 
been eradicated; and by means of experiments, demon- 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 39 

strationfi, publications, and lectures, a new interest in 
agricultural improvement and development has been 
awakened. The department has also been a training 
school in which hundreds of agricultural experts have 
been prepared for service elsewhere. 

New agricultural development. Largely as a result 
of the labors of the agricultural colleges, and of the 
National Department of Agriculture at Washington, 
agricultural education has been placed on a firm foun- 
dation, and practical and helpful assistance has been 
extended to farmers all over the United States, and 
in thousands of ways. Stock and seed breeding and 
testing have been developed to such an extent as to 
greatly increase productiveness and profits,^ while 
disease eradication among plants and animals has 
greatly reduced the former heavy mortality. The 
fruit-growing and dairy industries have been devel- 
oped into great businesses in themselves. New agri- 
cultural regions have been opened; new grains and 
fruits introduced into old regions; new methods of 
marketing and preserving demonstrated; and new 
bookkeeping methods have been employed. Free 
printed matter, farmers' institutes, and agricultural 
demonstration trains have carried practical informa- 

^ A splendid illustration of this has been the development of a 
new seed barley, which has standardized the grain and doubled the 
yield. This was done during the past ten years at the University of 
Wisconsin, and is described in the World's Work for December, 1912. 
The financial gain from this new grain is estimated at $12,000,000 a 
year in Wisconsin alone. 



40 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tion direct to the homes, and a new interest in agri- 
cultural education, both for adults and for children, 
has everywhere become prominent. 

New markets. Improvements in marketing have 
also contributed much to the changes noted in this 
fourth-period development. No longer, in most sec- 
tions, do small loads have to be taken long distances 
to town over a muddy road to be sold or exchanged. 
Good wagon roads, branch steam roads, the interurban 
trolley, and the automobile truck have greatly changed 
the nature of the haul; while express trains, refrigera- 
tor cars, and the telegraph enable the farmer to reach 
the distant markets. The trolley car or the freight car 
on the farmer's siding in the afternoon is in the distant 
city in the morning. The peach -grower of western 
Michigan sends his peaches to Pittsburg and Buffalo; 
the garden-truck- grower of the South can market his 
products in every Northern city; the grower of water- 
melons in Oklahoma finds his markets in St. Louis, St. 
Paul, and Chicago; the butter-maker of Wisconsin and 
Minnesota reaches the markets of the North Central 
States; the orchardist and vineyardist of California 
finds his markets in the Eastern cities and in Europe; 
and the grower of apples in Oregon and Washington 
supplies the hotels of New York and Chicago with 
fruit. Specialization, standardization, and cooperative 
marketing have in a generation created new markets 
and greatly changed the nature of agricultural life. 
Farm products are no longer bartered in the village. 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 41 

but are sold wholesale to regular dealers in exchange 
for bank checks. In some branches of farm work the 
farmer has little marketing to do, he being able to sell 
his products " standing," or on the hoof or tree, to 
the packer or shipper, while elsewhere cooperative 
exchanges or associations, managed by the farmers 
themselves, undertake the shipping and marketing 
process. The old-type farmer, with a few fruit trees, 
two or three cows, and a few acres of grain, is being 
crowded more and more to the wall by the new-type 
farmer, of either the farm-specialist or the intensive- 
farmer type. Agriculture has progressed from the self- 
sufficing and the barter stage to that of a well-organ- 
ized business undertaking, requiring capital, scientific 
knowledge, and business foresight and energy. Instead 
of a miner, getting a more or less precarious existence 
from the soil, the farmer has evolved into a manu- 
facturer of farm products, and one employing the 
best machinery and the most approved scientific pro- 
cesses. 

Agricultural expansion. The remarkable develop- 
ment of agriculture in the United States during 
the past two decades may be seen from the table on 
page 42. 

Since 1890 we have about reached the end of our 
good free agricultural land for homes, and the efforts 
to secure new lands have led to the proposal and 
development of large irrigation and drainage schemes, 
in the South and West, and under both state and fed- 



42 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



TABLE, SHOWING THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT 
OF AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES 



Year 


Yearly value per 

acre of ten chief 

crops 


Total value of farm 
products, at farm 


Export value of 

agricultural exports 

(at U.S. port) 


1895 

1896 
1897 
1898 


$8.12 
7.94 
9.07 
9.00 


$3,961,000,000 
4,339,000,000 


$574,398,264 
689,755,193 
859,018,946 
792,811,733 


1899 
1900 
1901 
1902 


9.13 
10.31 
11.43 
12.07 


4,717,000,000 
5,017,000,000 
5,317,000,000 
5,617,000,000 


844,616,530 
951,628,331 
857,113,533 

878,480,557 


1903 
1904 
1905 
1906 


12.62 
13.26 
13.28 
13.46 


5,887,000,000 
6,122,000,000 
6,274,000,000 
6,764,000,000 


859,160,264 

826,904,777 

976,047,104 

1,054,405,416 


1907 
1908 
1909 
1910 


14.74 
15.32 
16.00 
15.53 


7,488,000,000 
7,891,000,000 
8,498,000,000 
9,037,000,000 


1,017,396,404 
903,238,122 
871,158,425 

1,030,794,402 


1911 
1912 


15.51 
c. 16.10(.?) 


8,819,000,000 
9,299,000,000 


1,050,111,604 
1,050,627,131 



eral control. The great world-wide increase in city- 
population and in the number engaged in the manu- 
facturing industries, all of whom are food and clothing 
consumers but not producers, coupled with a world- 
wide increase in the standard of living and the per 
capita food and clothing consumption of people, have 
created much greater demands for fruits, grains, 
meats, hides, cotton, and wool than heretofore. The 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 



43 



result has been that we, as a nation, are already expe- 
riencing the beginnings of a time when, as the political 
economist states it, '* the increase in population begins 
to press on the means of subsistence," and we see this 
evidenced in the constantly rising values of agricul- 
tural land and of all agricultural products, as well as 













1 




Value per Acre of 
Farm Property. 






1 1 








1 
1 I 












/ / 












1'^ 










^ 


'!/ 






-- ' 





^ 


W 


^ 


OhiP.,— — 




^^.^^^ 


-:;^- 




./-" 




^""^"^^^^ 


^. -"^ 






— z^ 










^ — 













fllO, 
100. 
90. 
80. 
70. 
GO. 
50. 
40. 
30. 
20. 
10. 



oo 00^ S S S 3 2i 

Fig. 12. FARM PROPERTY VALUES 

shoes and clothing. Since 1900 but little new agricul- 
tural or grazing land has been opened, while, on the 
contrary, the percentage of unimproved farm lands has 
been greatly decreased. These changes are shown in 
the accompanying chart. 

The future. These conditions will not be temporary 
or transient, but have come to stay, and will become 
more pronounced with time. In the mean time our 



44 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

population is increasing very rapidly, and this increase 
must be fed and clothed. At the present rate of in- 
crease we shall have a population of 150,000,000 by 
1935, and 200,000,000 by 1960. How to feed such a 
population as is just ahead of us is one of the big 
problems for the future to solve. In all probability, 
within the lifetime of children now born, all export of 
foodstuffs will have ceased, and even the rich United 
States will experience a serious shortage of bread. In 
beef to eat and hides for shoes we are already begin- 
ning to experience such a shortage. From now on we 
may look upon farming as being a capitalized indus- 
try, calling for knowledge and executive ability, and 
attracting men of capital and brains. The man of 
small energy or capacity, the novice, the man lacking 
in scientific knowledge, and the man of little or no 
capital will find it increasingly difficult to avoid be- 
ing pushed to the wall in the new agricultural busi- 
ness which the past quarter of a century has seen 
developed in our land. 

The reorganization and commercialization of Amer- 
ican agriculture has been accompanied by two develop- 
ments, each of which is causing some concern to those 
interested in the preservation of rural institutions. 
The first is farming as a business and with farms under 
the control of a scientific farm manager; the other is 
the marked increase in farm tenantry. Of the two, the 
latter is the more common and, from a social point of 
view, far the more serious. 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 45 

Commercial large-scale farming. Nineteen per cent 
of the farm land of the United States is to-day in farm 
tracts of one thousand acres or more. The acreage in 
such tracts naturally is greater in the West than in the 
East. Many of these tracts are held for speculation, 
and will be subdivided and sold in small parcels later 
on. This will naturally tend to increase the number of 
farms and farmers, and to decrease the average size of 
the farms. This subdivision of large estates and the 
creation of small farms is a good thing for the state, 
and may be expected to go on as population increases 
in density and farm lands increase in value. In places, 
however, the opposite tendency frequently manifests 
itself, and large areas are being bought up by com- 
panies of large capital, to be farmed under farm man- 
agers and according to thorough business methods. A 
seventeen-thousand-acre tract is reported near Little 
Rock, Arkansas; a one-hundred-thousand-acre farm, 
in southern Texas, managed along careful financial 
lines, has recently been described; ^ a Chicago com- 
pany recently drained a million acres of swamp land 
for rice farming in Louisiana; a number of British 
individuals and companies have recently bought up 
large areas in the South and W^est, for purely business 
farming; the Solano Irrigated Farms Company has 
recently been organized in California to farm, by 
scientific methods and as a business proposition, a 
tract of thirty-three thousand acres of rich delta land. 
^ See World's Work for January, 1913. 



46 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



Similar business farming companies now exist and are 
being organized in many parts of the country, for the 
purpose of farming large tracts of land, and accord- 
ing to department-store methods. In the South this 
means farming with Negro day labor ; in the North and 
West, often with cheap foreign labor. It frequently 
results in a marked development of the acres culti- 
vated, — new towns, railroads, industries, and busi- 
ness; but it creates new social conditions in rural 
society which call for different social, religious, and 
educational treatment from that which satisfied the 
needs of an earlier and simpler agricultural situation. 



PER CENT OF TOTAL ACREAGE UNDER FARM 
MANAGERS 



Division 


1900 


1910 


1 


New England States 


3.9% 

3.3 

2.0 

3.3 

3.3 

2.0 
26.2 
35.6 
18.0 


5.5% 
4.0 


<? 


Middle Atlantic States 


3 


East North Central States 


2.0 


4 


West North Central States 


2.2 


5 


South Atlantic States.. 


3.2 


6 


East South Central States 


2.0 


7 


West South Central States. 


11.6 


8 




18.5 


Q 


Pacific States.. 


15.4 









Intensive small-scale farming. On the smaller 
farms in the eastern part of the country, and in the 
vicinity of large cities generally, the intensive and di- 
versified farming of sciall tracts for profit is becoming 
very common, and it is in these states that farming 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 47 

under a scientific manager is on the increase. Due to 
the nearness to a constantly expanding city market, 
an easily available supply of cheap labor, the short 
haul, and the good prices obtained, a small farm of 
twenty to forty acres there has become a good com- 
mercial business and a well-paying investment. Such 
farms are being bought up by investors, and in the 
southern New England States there are many such 
which pay well. Such farms, themselves well tilled 
and put to diversified market farming, often possess 
greenhouse, fruit, model dairy, piggery, and poul- 
try departments, as well as vegetables and some 
grains. Not infrequently, however, such farms are also 
business propositions, run in connection with a city 
hotel, catering company, or group of stores, or as an 
investment by some well-to-do city owner. Careful 
accounts of all operations are kept. The owner, in such 
cases, seldom lives on the farm, and visits it only occa- 
sionally to inspect it or to confer with the resident 
manager. If run in connection with a hotel or catering 
company, waste from the kitchens is sold to the pig- 
gery or poultry departments of the farm, while flowers, 
vegetables, chickens, eggs, milk, and pork are sold to 
the catering end of the business. The farm on the one 
hand and the hotel or catering company on the other 
are run in cooperation, and each helps to make the 
other pay. This kind of farming, while excellent as a 
business proposition, has also resulted in social changes 
of great and far-reaching consequences for rural life. 



48 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



Decreasing rural population. The decrease in the 
number of resident farm laborers actually needed, due 
to the use of improved machinery, or one-crop special- 
ization, or both; the increased capital required to buy 
farm land and to conduct farming operations ; and the 
buying-up of farms as an investment, to be managed 

ttORSf-SHOE BELT OF BLACK MAJORITIES 

(66count1es; figured indicattthe 
pe:r cent of negro population. 

counties with increased negro 

RATIOS IN 1910 (.^8COyNTIC5) 

COUNTIES WITH DECREASED 
NEGRO RATIOS. (22C0UMTIES) 

COONTtES CHANGED TO WHITE 
MAJORITIES IN 1910 (5) 
I COUNTIES CHANGED TO NECRO 
TIES IN 1910 (2) 




Fia. 13. BLACK COUNTIES IN GEORGIA 

(From a bulletin of "The Georgia Club " of the State Normal School.) 
Due largely to the substitution of a Negro for a white farming population, due 
to farm tenantry. 



50 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



in a scientific manner by a farm superintendent, em- 
ploying cheap labor and as needed, have all alike 
tended to make farming more and more of an intensive 
business and less of a home-providing industry, and, 
accordingly, to both a decrease in the rural population 
itself and to a change in its character. In the South it 
has resulted in the substitution of a Negro for a white 
population in many counties, while in the Northern 
States, where the farms are the most valuable and 
where the use of improved machinery is most com- 
mon, we find this decrease in population and change 
in character most pronounced. As shown by the full- 




FiG. 15. CHANGES IN THE RURAL POPULATION IN EIGHT IMPOR- 
TANT AGRICULTURAL STATES 

(Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.) 
On this map the counties in which the population decreased during the past ten 
years are black. Those marked with a cross show a population increase, but 
contained cities of 10,OnO or more inhabitants by the cenaua of 1900. In the coun- 
ties left white the population also increased. 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 51 

page map on page 49, giving the increase or decrease in 
the rural population by states for the decade from 1900 
to 1910, four of our richest and most important agri- 
cultural states have actually lost in rural population, 
while the smaller map shows that many counties in the 
central agricultural belt have fewer people in the rural 
districts than they had ten years ago.^ This loss in 
population is largely due to the changes which we 
have described as characterizing the fourth period of 
our agricultural development. From an agricultural 
point of view the loss may not be of any serious signifi- 
cance, and may even be a good thing, but the effect 
of this loss on such rural institutions as the church and 
the school has been most pronounced. 

III. FARM TENANTRY 

Recent increase. The leasing of farms to tenants is 
nearly everywhere on the increase, and is everywhere 
attracting the attention of thoughtful men. Over one 
third of the farms of the United States are to-day 

TENANT FARMS IN THE UNITED STATES 

1880 25.6% 

1890 28.4 

1900 35.3 

1910 37.0 

^ In Iowa the rural sections lost approximately 120,000 inhabit- 
ants. Rural Indiana lost 87,123, or 5.1 percent; and rural Missouri 
lost 68,716, or 3.5 per cent. In Illinois, 1113 out of 1592 townships 
having less than 2500 inhabitants, lost in population during the 
decade 1900-1910. 



52 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



cultivated by tenants. In the Southern States the per- 
centage is higher than in the Northern States, and it is 
higher in the older Northern States than in the new 
states of the West. The recent increase in farm tenancy 
in fifteen of the most important agricultural states 
may be seen from the following table : — 



PERCENTAGE 


OF TENANT FARMERS 




States 


1880 


1890 


1900 


1910 


New York- 


16.5 
19.3 

23.7 
31.4 
23.8 

10.0 
9.1 
9.1 

18.0 
16.3 
27.3 

44.9 
46.8 
37.6 


20.2 
22.9 
25.4 
34.0 

28.1 

14.0 
11.4 
12.9 

28.2 
24.7 
26.8 

53.6 
48.6 
41.9 


23.9 

27.4 
28.7 
39.3 
34.9 

15.9 
13.5 
17.3 

35.2 
36.9 
30.5 
43.8 

59.9 

57.7 
49.7 


20.8 


Ohio 


28.4 


Indiana. 


30.0 


Illinois 


41.4 


Iowa. 


37.8 


Michigan 


15.8 


Wisconsin 


13.9 


Minnesota. . 


21.0 




36.8 


Kansas 


38.1 


Missouri. 


29.9 


Oklahoma 


54.8 


Georgia 


65.6 


Alabama 


60.2 


Texas 


52.6 







The chart on the opposite page shows the same thing 
graphically, for each of the states, but by acreage 
instead of by the number of farms. 

Recent change in character. Not only is the per- 
centage of tenancy increasing, but a significant change 
in the character of the tenants has also recently begun 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 



53 




■■owners PM managers i^gXENANTS 

Fig. 16. ACREAGE OF ALL LAND IN FARMS CLASSIFIED BY CHAR- 
ACTER OF TENURE OF OPERATOR, 1910 



54 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

to manifest itself in certain states and regions. This 
change in the character of the farm tenants is Hkely 
to become one of the marked features of the fourth 
period of our agricultural development, and needs to 
be described somewhat fully. 

The migrations of foreign-born to the United States 
before about 1882 were chiefly from the north and west 
of Europe, — English, Irish, Germans, and Scandina- 
vians. Many of these settled in the states of the then 
Northwest, and contributed much to their develop- 
ment and strength. About 1882 the character of our 
immigration began to change in a very remarkable 
manner, and, after about 1890, this change became 
very marked. The Germans practically stopped, the 
Irish and Scandinavians decreased, and the English 
and Scotch turned to Canada. In their place came a 
rapidly increasing number of people from the south 
and east of Europe, — southern Italians, Sicilians, 
Huns, Poles, Russians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, Ser- 
vians, Croatians, Dalmatians, and Roumanians. 
Japanese, also, came for a time in numbers to the 
states of the Pacific Coast. After about 1900, edu- 
cated Finns from the north and poor Russian Jews 
from the east of Europe, alike driven out by Russian 
persecutions; and Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians 
from the south and east, have come to us in rapidly 
increasing numbers. 

The effect of this change, during the past decade, is 
shown by the following table : — 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 



55 



TABLE, SHOWING THE CHANGES IN TEN YEARS IN 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE FOREIGN-BORN 



Per cent of the total 



Country of Birth 



Northwestern Europe 

England and Wales 

Scotland 

Ireland 

Germany 

Scandinavian States 

Netherlands . . . . 

France 

Switzerland 

Southern and Eastern Europe. 

Spain and Portugal 

Italy 

Greece 

Russia and Finland 

Austria-Hungary 

Balkan States 

Turkey 

Canada 

Mexico 

China and Japan 



The southern and eastern Europeans are of a very 
different type from the Germans, English, Scotch, and 
Scandinavians who preceded them. These earher 
peoples were from lands where general education and a 
relatively high degree of civilization prevailed. They 
were intelligent, thrifty, and law-abiding. The later 
migrations do not manifest these characteristics so 
strongly. They are thrifty but ignorant, and usually 
wretchedly poor; they come from countries where 




56 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

popular education and popular government have as 
yet made but little headway; they are often lack- 
ing in initiative and self-reliance; and they lack the 
Anglo-Teutonic conceptions of law and order, and the 
Anglo-Saxon conception of government by popular 
will. The poorest and least foresighted of them have 
settled in our cities and in the mining and manufactur- 
ing districts, and form the cheap labor of the land. 
The more intelligent and progressive have pushed on 
to the westward, and have turned to agricultural 
employment. This has been particularly the case with 
the Italians, the Slavs, and those from Turkish terri- 
tory. The Japanese and the Chinese in the West have 
also largely turned to agriculture. The map of the 
United States on the opposite page shows the distri- 
bution of the foreign-born. The heavy percentage of 
foreign-born in the strictly agricultural and rural states 
of the West, as well as in the manufacturing states of 
the East, is worthy of note. 

New tenants. It is these more recent arrivals — 
south Italians, Austro-IIuns, Poles, Slavs, Bulgars, 
Armenians, and Japanese — who are now beginning to 
take the place as farm tenants, in the Northern States, 
of the well-to-do farmer previously described. In all 
of the Northern States we find them, though not in 
all counties or regions. The movement of these 
peoples to the farms is probably as yet only in its 
beginnings. These same people are also pushing on to 
the new lands of the West, where they are helping to 



58 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

open up farms, often on a large scale. ^ The Italians 
are rapidly pushing into the agricultural states of the 
South, where they are beginning to displace the less 
energetic Negro farmer. Many of these new people 
have been peasant farmers in Europe, they know how 
to handle farm work, they are used to a much lower 
standard of living than the American farmer or farm 
hand will endure, and frequently live in wretched 
poverty that they may rear their families and save 
enough to buy, eventually, a farm of their own. 

At first these people are employed as farm laborers, 
little shacks on the corners of the farm being con- 
structed for them to live in. The next step is the tenant 
stage, the owner leasing the farm to them to manage. 
Sometimes the owner remains in the farmhouse and 
enjoys the leisure; very often, though, he closes the 
farm home and moves to town with his family. There 
he lives on his income and enjoys the pleasures of city 
life. The new tenants are at first too poor to furnish 
machinery or much equipment, so they lease a fur- 
nished farm at a share or a fixed-cash rental. Share 
tenantry soon changes to cash tenantry, for the reason 
that the owner, who has moved to town, is unable to 

^ In California, for example, 29.7 per cent of the farmers are 
foreign-born whites, and 3.5 per cent are foreign-born non-whites. 
Of the foreign-born whites, all of the above-mentioned nationalities 
are found, there being in 1910, for example, 2457 Italian farmers, 
181 G Japanese, and about 9000 from countries to the south and east 
of Europe. The climate and agriculture of the South and of the 
west coast of the United States are so suited to Mediterranean peo- 
ples that we may expect to see them come in increasing numbers. 




( Courhsij, Rural Manhood.) 
One of four trolleys in a Massachusetts train. 




( Courtesy, Sunset Magazine. ) 

The lecture car in a California demonstration train. 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION IN AGRICULTURE 




When the colonists first came. 



The first house. 




One of the later dwellings. 
NEW FARM WORKERS AND OWNERS 

An Italian agricultural settlement in Arkansas. The picture below was 
taken fourteen years after the two above. This shows well the way in which 
South Europeans slowly evolve into American farmers of the home-builder 
type. For all such, rural education of a very practical kind is needed. 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 59 

oversee the work of a share tenant. As the farmer and 
his family find their wants expanding and the cost of 
living moving upward, the tendency is to re-lease the 
farm only to the highest bidder, and to make as few 
improvements as possible. During the growing season 
the tenant has Httle or nothing, and the increasing 
cash rental frequently leaves him with little surplus 
after the crops are sold and the debts have been paid. 
If the lease is not renewed on what the tenant considers 
good terms, he takes his tools and such family as he 
may have, and moves on. This condition creates a 
transient tenantry, who have but a passing interest 
in the local institutions of rural society, and the social 
and educational consequences of this change, as will 
be pointed out in the following chapters, are very 
great. 

The Southern Negro tenant. In the Southern States 
the introduction of Negro tenantry has followed 
largely as a result of unintelligent farming, which has 
in turn resulted in soil exhaustion. Due to decreas- 
ing crops the former owners have lost their lands to 
money-lenders, and tenantry farming has resulted. 
Cotton becomes the one crop, and the economic and 
social results are pathetic. The crop is mortgaged to 
obtain seed and means to live on during the growing 
period, the yield and profits are small, the tenants 
move from farm to farm in the hope of better luck, and 
society becomes stratified into landlord, tenant, and 
money-lending merchant. In the exclusive wheat and 



60 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

corn regions of the Northern States, and in the hay- 
regions of the Northeastern States, we find similar con- 
ditions beginning to manifest themselves. 

The intermittent farm laborer. With the develop- 
ment of intensive agriculture near the large labor 
markets, or with farm specialization as a business 
undertaking elsewhere, the Negroes in the South and 
these new peoples in the North and Far West form the 
cheap farm labor which is '* taken on" and " let off," 
as needed. If the farm is a business investment of 
some non-resident owner, he not infrequently employs 
a manager with an agricultural education and an auto- 
mobile, who manages the farm on a salary, and by the 
intermittent employment of such cheap labor as may 
be necessary. Not infrequently the owner is himself 
the manager, and conducts his farm on some such plan. 

The fourth-period changes. Omitting remote and 
sparsely settled regions, and omitting the small, par- 
tially self-sufficing, and somewhat independent farmer 
who lives in the country largely from choice, the third 
or commercial and home-building stage has now 
everywhere been reached in the development of our 
American agriculture. Somewhere, in practically 
every agricultural state, these third-period conditions 
are in turn giving way to the fourth-period conditions, 
though the latter naturally have not, as yet, been 
fully evolved in all sections. The commercialization of 
agriculture has come in all except the remote regions, 
or regions inhabited by poor, unintelligent, and im- 



NEW RURAL-LIFE CONDITIONS 61 

provident people. In such regions and among such 
people the self-sufficing stage may, as yet in part, 
prevail. The urbanization of rural life has also come, 
to a greater or less degree, to all except the remote or 
sparsely settled regions. In some states and in many 
counties, the tenantry problem, and especially foreign 
tenantry, has not as yet arrived; in others the begin- 
nings only are to be found, and may be scarcely recog- 
nized as yet; in others the change is in full swing, and 
the original farmers of entire neighborhoods have been 
replaced by the new tenant class. The agricultural 
consequences of these changes may not be very signi- 
ficant; the educational and social consequences, how- 
ever, are very important and far-reaching. 

With the increasing values for good farm lands, and 
the increasing use of expensive farm machinery, each 
decade it becomes harder for a man without capital to 
engage in farming as an owner. Values, wages, and the 
conditions of farming now favor the property-owning 
class of farmers, and the farm-laboring class tends to 
become more and more like the factory laborer in the 
city. This brings the old question of the relations of 
capital and labor into rural life, to be worked out in 
agriculture as well as in the manufacturing industries. 

Having now described, at some length, the historical 
development of American agriculture, and the vast 
changes in rural life which have come as a consequence 
of this development, we shall, in succeeding chapters, 
point out the great and far-reaching social conse- 



62 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

quences of these changed conditions, and then show 
the relation of these changes to the problems surround- 
ing the improvement of the rural school. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What is meant by the old isolation practically ending? 

2. Estimate the time- and labor-saving effect of the introduction 
of the new rural conveniences, described on pp. 32-33. 

3. How rapidly are the homes in your neighborhood being trans- 
formed in the manner described on pp. 33-34.? 

4. Explain the change, in the cityward movement, from an indi- 
vidual movement in the second and third periods to a family 
movement in the fourth period. 

5. How far has the commercialization of agriculture progressed in 
your community or county.'' 

6. Where do your farmers find their markets.'' 

7. About how much capital would be required to buy a good farm 
in your neighborhood.' how much capital would it take to run it 
a year; and about what would be the value of its output.'' 

8. Is the rural population in your county increasing or decreasing? 
If so, why? 

9. Is it changing in character? If so, how? 

10. Have southern Europeans begun to come into the county, as 
farmers? If so, what races? How do they live and farm? 

11. How far have the fourth-period changes evolved in your 
county? 

12. Have you different communities in the county which typify 
second-, third-, and fourth-period conditions? Have you also 
intermediate types? 

13. Have specialization, standardization, and cooperative market- 
ing become common in your county as yet? In what lines? 



CHAPTER III 

EFFECTS OF THESE CHANGES ON RURAL SOCIETY 
AND RURAL INSTITUTIONS 

Up to very recently rural social life and institutions 
have always possessed certain marked and very defi- 
nite characteristics, but where the changes which have 
characterized the fourth period in the development 
of American agriculture, as described in the preced- 
ing chapter, have taken place, they have materially 
changed the nature of rural society and have under- 
mined the old rural social institutions. The effects of 
these changes have been most marked with reference 
to (l) rural social life, (2) local government, (3) the 
rural church, and (4) the rural school. These we shall 
next consider, in order. 

I. RURAL SOCIAL LIFE 

Early social life. During the early pioneer period 
this was very limited. Isolation and loneliness were 
the rule, except where a little settlement existed. With 
the coming of more people and the development of 
roads and villages, local intercourse became easier and 
more common, and this soon developed into what may 
be termed rural society. There were barn-raisings, 
husking- and quilting-bees, sugaring-offs, spelling- 
matches, singing-schools, literary societies, weddings, 



64 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

funerals, dances, parties, and church " socials," as 
well as prayer-meetings, and Sunday school and Sun- 
day church, to which farmers and their families came 
from miles around. Generally speaking, all were 
admitted to these local social gatherings. The people 
knew one another, formed a homogeneous group, and 
often maintained close social relationships. Their 
children attended the same district school, grew up 
together, and intermarried. It was not uncommon, a 
score of years ago, to find most of the people of an old 
established community related to one another. This is 
still the case in those older communities which have 
not as yet experienced many of the fourth-period 
changes, but it is much less common than it used to be. 
New and larger interests. With the urbanization of 
rural life, as described in the preceding chapter, there 
has been a marked breaking-up of this close social 
relationship in the rural communities. The barn- 
raisings, husking- and quilting-bees, spelling-matches, 
and singing and literary societies have all disappeared, 
and the church social has declined in importance. The 
urbanization process has also greatly changed the 
farmer himself. He is no longer so peculiar in his dress, 
his manners, or his speech, and the newspapers have 
largely ceased to make fun of him or to caricature him. 
The daily metropolitan newspaper, the illustrated 
monthly magazine, public education, the steam train, 
the interurban trolley, and the automobile, as well as 
the many inventions and discoveries of science, have 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 65 

opened up a new world to the farmer, his wife, and his 
children. New and larger interests now occupy their 
minds; local social relationships interest them less; 
larger and more distant matters interest them more. 
Their range of acquaintances has increased; they can- 
not know the many so well as they once knew the few. 
The farmer comes to feel himself a part of a larger 
society, — a county, a state, or the nation, rather than 
of a district or a township, — and he takes an interest 
in the affairs of the larger unit. Farm specialization, 
scientific management, and improved machinery have 
given him more time to read and to think, and more 
time for personal enjoyment, and he travels farther 
and more. The result has been a great widening of 
personal relationships and a marked weakening of the 
old local personal ties. 

City connections. The literary and social clubs and 
the fraternal orders of the towns now count many 
farmers and their wives as members. City connections 

— financial, professional, social, political, and religious 

— are established. The children attend the high school 
in the neighboring town or city, copy town ways and 
dress, and form new friendships there. The young 
farmer, with his automobile, begins to call on the city 
girls, and the farmer's daughters establish city social 
connections. The social horizon is soon greatly en- 
larged. The increasing wealth of the farmer and the 
better education of his children have made both his son 
and his daughter acceptable socially where they would 



66 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

not have been received a generation ago. Marriages 
are accordingly made at a much greater distance than 
formerly, and with new social classes. 

Enjoyment of life. As prosperity comes to the 
farmer, he begins to enjoy life more. He goes on a 
cheap excursion somewhere, and soon establishes the 
vacation habit. We next find him spending the winter 
with his son or daughter " in town " or in some distant 
city, leaving the farm in the care of a hired man. Soon 
a trip to Florida, Texas, or California during the "off 
season " is not considered too far. From the middle of 
December to the middle of March, many of the board- 
ing-houses and cheaper-rate hotels of Los Angeles and 
vicinity are crowded with farmers and their wives from 
the Middle West, who have gone to California to 
spend the winter season. They crowd the sight-seeing 
trolleys, visit the orchards and the beaches, and travel 
on the day trains to see and comment on the farms and 
ranches they pass. The great increase in land and 
produce values, together with the increase in acreage 
production due to scientific methods and management, 
make the farmer feel that he can afford these pleasures. 
Not infrequently he goes home, sells out, and moves to 
some new place he has seen in his travels. In any case 
he returns from his trips a broader-minded man, with 
new thoughts and new interests, and more a citizen of 
the world than of a county. 

Tenantry and social life. In communities where 
there has been an introduction of foreign farm ten- 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 67 

antry the old rural social life still more rapidly disin- 
tegrates. The old families retain their friendships and 
maintain social relationships with one another, but 
there are few social relations established with the new 
tenants. The old families frequently resent their 
intrusion into the neighborhood. "Calls" are limited 

S50. 



40. 



30. 



20, 



10. 





Av 


erage Valu( 


3 per Acre c 


)f:- 


/ 

/ 
/ 












/ / 
/ / 

/ / 

/ / 






AilfaiSL- 







/ / 


^ 




Xand aud 


-^1S^' 







Fio. 18. AVERAGE VALUE OF FARM PROPERTY 

almost entirely to cases of sickness or death, and both 
parties to the employing or leasing contract under- 
stand that it is to be a business and not a social rela- 
tionship. Those who remain on the neighboring farms 
lose their old loyalty to the rural neighborhood and to 
rural institutions, and one by one follow their neigh- 
bors to town, or practically withdraw from the neigh- 
borhood social life. In the Southern States, as the 
blacks come in the whites move out, and the complex- 



68 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

ion of the country changes rapidly to black. By the 
migration of whole families the country is drained alike 
of the energy of youth and the experience of age, and 
the rural districts, in consequence, experience a social, 
political, and religious degeneration. One of the most 
important social questions now facing those inter- 
ested in rural welfare is how to prevent this change and 
preserve the old life standards. 

II. LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

Loss of interest. The effect of these fourth-period 
changes on local government is also marked. With the 
development of new and larger interests in things be- 
yond the rural community, the rural resident gradually 
loses interest in the things at home. As he becomes a 
citizen of the world rather than of a school district or 
township, the world's work interests him much more, 
and the government and the petty questions of the 
school district and the township interest him much 
less. Questions and elections which once seemed all- 
important to him now too often seem of such small 
significance that he is unwilling to take the time to go 
to the meeting or to the polls. The larger and more 
important his farm business, the more he reads and 
travels, and the broader his interests become, the less 
he is likely to take any real interest in the small affairs 
of local government. The effects of this change in rural 
outlook are seen in the decline in importance of and 
attendance at, and often the entire abolition of the 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 69 

annual school-district meeting; the decline in attend- 
ance at and interest in the annual town and township 
meetings; the difficulty in securing good men to serve 
as local school or township officials; and the small 
percentage of voters who take the trouble to vote at 
these local elections, unless there is some local jBght 
involved. 

The new tenants and government. As foreign farm 
tenantry is introduced, the effect on local self-govern- 
ment becomes even more marked. The movement of 
the older home-builder type of families to town, leav- 
ing the farms in the hands of the newer class of tenants, 
results in a great dearth of personality in many rural 
districts. In marked contrast with the farmer he dis- 
places, — strong, opinionated, virile, deeply conscious 
of his personal worth, and deeply interested in political 
affairs, — the newcomer is too often docile, subser- 
vient, and without decided opinions on any question. 
If the new tenant is of south European stock, he is 
almost devoid of the Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the 
importance of local self-government, and he is natu- 
rally but little interested in our forms of government 
or our political life. The lack of ownership of any 
property, and often the expectation of but a transient 
residence, naturally contribute to the lack of interest. 
These conditions are far from universal, yet in many 
rural communities the change has progressed so far 
that there is now no longer enough of the older resi- 
dential class remaining to carry on the work of local 



70 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



DZIKIff 

Polsko-Amerykanskich 
Farmerow 

w Kolegium Agronomicznem Stanu Mass. 
Amherst, Mass. wPiatek dnia 31 Marca 1911 

Program w Kaplicy Kolegium. 
Wstep wolny. Przekaski 25 ct. 

O godzime 10 z rana, Odezyt : " Wybor lepszego naasiiia Cebull" pna proleaora G. E. Stone 
Odoyt: "NawoipodCebule" .... profesor W. F Broob 

Dyskusya - .... p. Fianciszek GrybLo ; z Sunderland 

'" Potizeba stania sie dobrymi obywatelami ameiykanskimi.** p. Jan Romaszkievncz z BoatoDU 

o 12 godzime w poludnie przekaska w sail gimnastycznei 

Od godziny 1 2.30 do 1 .30 zwiedzanie slodol i inspcctow 
Q^odzinie 1.30, Odezyt: " Jaka pasze kupowac dia krow " [)r. J. B. Lindsey 

Odezyt ! " W jaki sposob nabyc sily i bye zawsze sflnym " p. F. Nelligan. profesor Fizyki z Amherst 
'Odezyt : Czy poUcy farraerzy chca azeby Kolegium pomagalo im w uczeniu tie 

angielkiego jezyka i w nauee Lch dzieci >" . . p. C H. Wliite 

Odezyt : " Co Polacy zrobili dIa Ameryki " . • Dr. G. W. Tupper z Borton 

Tlomacz p, K. J. Wolski z Holyofce. 

POLISH-AMERICAN FARMERS DAY 

AT THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 
MARCH. 31. 1911 

Practical Talks on selecting onion seed and fertilizing onions. 
What feeds to buy for dairy animals. Good Citizenship. Physical Edu*- 
cation and Polish-American history. 

THE POLISH farmers' DAY POSTER 



Fig. 19. THE POLISH FARMERS'-DAY POSTER 

self-government, and these newer tenants are, in such 
communities, being elected to fill offices in local gov- 
ernment for which at best they are but poorly pre- 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 71 

pared. Jose Cardoza, Francesco Bertolini, and Petar 
Petarovich are elected as school directors; Nels 
Peterson as township clerk; and Alexis Lodowsky as 
township trustee. The process is of course educative to 
these newcomers, though a little hard on local govern- 
ment. The wonder is that they do as well as they do. 

III. THE CHURCH 

The rural church. The rural church, perhaps more 
than any other rural institution, has felt the effects of 
these recent social changes. Everywhere we read of 
the decline in influence and of the dying-out of the 
rural church, and everywhere thoughtful men look 
almost hopelessly at the problem, wondering what the 
future will be. The church, so long secure in its posi- 
tion as the very center of the community life, is now 
awakening, Rip Van Winkle like, to a realization that 
its whole world has changed and that the old condi- 
tions, under which it once held almost undisputed 
sway, are now gone, perhaps forever. 

The New England influence. The early settlers in 
all of the New England and Middle Colonies were 
deeply religious by nature. Most of them had come to 
this country because of religious motives ; religion and 
learning were to them very vital matters, and a deep 
religious interest has always been one of their marked 
characteristics. While religion was not so vital a mat- 
ter with the settlers in the Southern Colonies, it never- 
theless played an important part. Practically all of the 



72 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

early settlers, too, were adherents of some one of the 
branches of the Protestant faith. 

As these people pushed westward after the close of 
the Revolutionary War, they carried their native insti- 
tutions with them, and the Northern people, in partic- 
ular, gave a religious impress to all of the new states 
in which they settled. The settlement of northern 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, as well as of south- 
ern Michigan and Wisconsin, was but a repetition of 
the earlier New England migrations into New York. 
Trains of wagons carrying families from some town in 
the East, and taking their minister with them, poured 
into the then wilderness or on out onto the prairies. New 
settlements in the West were the children of old settle- 
ments, often of the same name, in the East. Every- 
where they created anew their New England institu- 
tions, chief among which were the town meeting, the 
church, and the school. In the course of time, meeting- 
houses were built all over the territory settled by these 
people. Sometimes their churches were built in the lit- 
tle villages which formed the trading center for a rural 
neighborhood, and sometimes they were located at the 
crossing of roads in the country. Methodist, Christian, 
Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational were among 
the chief denominations established. These churches 
became prominent rural institutions, and once exer- 
cised a very important social and religious influence. 

Large influence of the early church. During this 
period of our early development the church was a 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 73 



much more powerful factor in the lives of both old and 
young than it is to-day. The minister was everywhere 
respected and looked up to. The young were trained to 
go to church and to Sunday school, and Sunday was 
observed generally as a day of rest and religious service. 
A religious sanction for acts of conduct was frequently 





Fig. 20. TYPICAL ONE-ROOM RURAL CHURCHES 

set forth, and wrong actions by members of the com- 
munity were severely frouiied upon by the older mem- 
bers. The communities were small and homogeneous, 
and every one's actions were made a matter for com- 
munity discussion and reproof, and to a degree almost 
unknown to-day. The home, too, was more strict, and 
exercised a greater directing and restraining influence 
ov^er the children than is the case to-day. Courtesy, 
respect, proper demeanor, obedience, and honesty were 
inculcated. All of this was highly educative, and 
served to regulate the actions of both old and young. 
Early religious intensity. Under such conditions 
there was, naturally, no rural-church problem of any 



74 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

consequence. Church membership was the rule, and 
both men and women not only had pronounced con- 
victions as to the importance of religion, but also as to 
the relative worth of the churches of the village or of 
the rural community to which they belonged. Each 
was a defender of his or her church; there was much 
said about the only sure way to salvation ; and minis- 
ters not infrequently proved, to the satisfaction of 
themselves as well as of most of their congregation, 
that the members of other sects were lost souls. The 
natural combative nature of men drew them into the 
contest, while the struggle for leadership among the 
different denominations awakened much interest and 
gave the members engaged in it much personal satis- 
faction. The strong individualism and emotionalism 
of the time, the limited interests, and the common 
conception of the church as the dispenser of individual 
salvation, made it appeal strongly to the majority of 
rural and village people during the earlier periods of 
our agricultural development. The few to whom the 
sectarian strife and the strong emotionalism of the 
time did not appeal of course belonged to the "non- 
elect'* or the "totally depraved," and were dismissed 
with but little concern. The failure was of course with 
them; it could not be with the church. 

The intellectual revolution. Since those simple 
earlier days the whole spirit of our life has changed, 
and the changes have come so rapidly and have been 
of such a fundamental nature that they have shaken 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 75 

the church to its very foundations. Power-machinery 
has changed industry from an individual to a social 
undertaking; steam and electricity have revolutionized 
thinking, as well as industrial life; the restless question- 
ing spirit of science has entered into all phases of 
intellectual life, and the old theological security of the 
church has been swept aside; and the change from 
guesswork and luck farming to scientific farming has 
had its counterpart in the change from emotional 
enthusiasm to intellectual calculation. The new sci- 
ence of psychology, too, has come in to destroy the old 
conception of the soul, to show the interdependence of 
body, mind, and spirit, and to point out that to save a 
man's soul you must first save the man; while the new 
education has emphasized guidance and helpfulness 
rather than repression in dealing with the young. The 
old talk of the "only church" has vanished, carrying 
with it the old theological debates. The old zeal to 
get converts to build up "our church" is also almost 
gone, as it is realized now that one may lead a helpful 
religious life in connection with any church. Still more, 
it is now fully realized that church membership and 
a religious life are no longer necessarily synonymous 
terms. Personal character and the general level of our 
moral life are high to-day among the typical American 
farming class, but the moral strength is no longer 
coupled with a theological interest, and church rela- 
tionship is no longer considered as a necessary pre- 
requisite to it. Religion is now felt by many to be 



76 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

less vital than formerly, while economic life and suc- 
cess on earth are now worth more to them. The 
urbanization of rural life has created new interests, 
particularly for the young people, and the great 
expansion of world interests has given the farmer new 
points of view. 

Social nature of the old Sunday meeting. The old- 
time Sunday meeting was an important social as well 
as a religious affair. After the service a form of social 
reception was commonly held, the sermon was dis- 
cussed, and social amenities exchanged. The old 
families had their regular seats, and there was a family 
loyalty to the church, as an important neighborhood 
institution. There was a pride in the church edifice, 
too, on the part of the people, analogous to that which 
the farmer of the home-building type took in his home, 
his barn, and his acres. With the dying-out of the old 
theological and denominational zeal, and with the 
ushering-in of the changes in living which have marked 
the fourth period of our agricultural development, 
these conditions have rapidly changed. The theologi- 
cal abstractions have ceased to interest; the moralizing 
to attract. The telephone, the rural-mail delivery, the 
trolley, and better roads have destroyed the old isola- 
tion, which made the meeting-house a social center as 
well as a place of worship. 

Dying churches. During the past thirty years thou- 
sands of churches have died from exhaustion. Some 
have died because the old families which once sup- 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 77 

ported them have left; many others because, due to a 
decline in religious interest, there was no longer suffi- 
cient attendance or support to maintain them. No one 
section has a monopoly of this mortality. Every- 
where, from Maine to California, it is the same story. 
It has been asserted that to-day half the population of 
a dozen states almost never goes to church; while of 
Illinois, the very center of the agricultural life of the 
northern part of the nation, it has been asserted that 
there are more communities without the gospel than 
in any other state in the Union. Studies of the rural- 
church problem have been made in the New Eng- 
land States, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, 
Georgia, and other states. Everywhere the results are 
about the same. At the Michigan Rural-Life Confer- 
ence in 1911, it was stated that there were 10,000 dead 
rural churches in Illinois; 10,000 more about to die; 
and 500 already abandoned. One of the important 
denominations of the Southern States recently re- 
ported 1032 out of 3500 rural churches as without 
pastors, while 1600 of the 3500 churches had had no 
additions during the year by confession of faith. In 
the Methodist Church, for example, which is perhaps 
the most widely spread rural denomination, there has 
been a great consolidation of churches and circuits in 
the Northern States, since 1900, made necessary by 
these new conditions. A number of causes for this 
state of affairs exist. In part they are related to the 
great changes in the nature of rural life which we have 



78 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



previously traced; in part they are also due to a change 
in attitude toward the old religious problems. 

Problems which the church faces to-day. The 
church, in the mean time, has done little to meet these 



i 1 1 1 K 


"T i ! ri 

+! i 1 i i 



FiQ. 21. AN OVER-CHURCHED INDIANA TOWNSHIP 

Total population about 1300, half of whom are in the central village. Ten 
churches, seven different denominations. This is a rather typical condition; 
much worse conditions can be found in many counties. 

new life conditions. Piety has remained largely an 
isolated thing, instead of being made an expression of 
earnest human life; creed has been exalted above char- 
acter and good works; while denominationalism has 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 79 

divided the people and prevented a united fight 
against the real devils of our modern days, — drunk- 
enness, vulgarity, licentiousness, ignorance, and the 
devils within one's self. The false conceptions of the 
world as one of sin and corruption; the attempt at 
repression instead of guidance in dealing with the 
young; of religion as something external and apart 
from daily life; and the exaltation of the clergy, — 
these have all alike tended to isolate the church and to 
divorce religion from the people. 

The church finds itself in an even worse predica- 
ment in those regions where farm laborers or tenants 
of the newer type of immigrants are found. These 
newcomers, nearly all of whom are, nominally, at 
least, members of the Roman or Greek Catholic 
churches, find little or nothing in these old Protestant 
churches which appeals to them. They know nothing 
of their history, and neither understand nor care for 
their service. Their needs are essentially social and 
not religious, and the old Protestant churches, face to 
face with new peoples and new problems in an altered 
world, and with no program for social service worthy 
of the name, know not how to minister to this poor, 
ignorant, and landless class. 

Great potential usefuhiess, nevertheless. It is well 
for us to understand that the great changes in living 
which have taken place have had their effect on the 
churches as well as on other social institutions. It 
is especially important that the plight in which the 



80 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

church finds itself be understood, because the church 
is entirely too important an institution to lose. The 
day when it stood first is perhaps past, but it still 
remains one of our greatest social institutions, and with 
a possible usefulness far beyond its present rather 
limited service. Other institutions lack the perma- 
nence and the historic past of the church, as well as its 
spirit of sacrifice and its consecration to service. When 
the church can be awakened to a realization of its 
opportunities, as has been done in a few places, it 
stands almost first among the institutions of society 
for the upbuilding of the community and for the im- 
proving of its moral tone. Once the church held such a 
position by natural right; to-day it can hold it only by 
successful competition. 

The social mission of the rural church. If the church 
is to be strong and wield much influence, it must labor 
to build up the community rather than itself; it must 
look into the future, as well as into the past; and must 
first make of itself an eflScient earthly institution if it is 
to render a real spiritual service. The rural minister 
needs economic and agricultural knowledge more than 
theological, that he may use the economic and agricul- 
tural experiences of his people as a basis for the build- 
ing-up of their ethical life; he needs educational knowl- 
edge, that he may direct his efforts with the young 
along good pedagogical lines; and the church as an 
institution needs to study carefully the rural-life prob- 
lem, and to plan a program of useful service along 



RURAL SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS 81 

good educational and sociological lines. Unless this is 
done, the church will bear but little relationship to a 
living community; its influence on the young will be 
small; and its mission of moral and religious leader- 
ship will be forgotten by the people. In a succeeding 
chapter (v) a few noteworthy examples of such recon- 
structed churches will be described. 

The teacher and the church problem. It is impor- 
tant, too, that the rural or village teacher recognize the 
critical nature of the rural-church problem, and see 
it as a part of the community educational problem. 
Because of the importance of this, the greatly changed 
conditions which face the rural and village churches 
to-day have been described at some length. The de- 
cline in influence of these churches serves to modify 
the whole rural educational problem, and consequently 
to throw a much greater burden upon the rural and 
small village schools. In proportion as the church 
declines in social, moral, and religious influence, other 
community forces must take its place and do its work. 

Chief among these stands the school. It, too, has 
been hard-pressed by the great economic and social 
changes which have marked the third and fourth 
periods of our agricultural development, and the social 
and educational demands now made upon it are very 
much greater than they were a generation or two ago. 
It, too, generally speaking, has responded but little to 
the changed conditions, and with the result that it, 
too, has been left behind in the progress of our civiliza- 



82 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tion. Once an important rural-community institution, 
it has to-day, in part, lost its former hold, and, like the 
church, too often fails to serve because it has not 
changed to meet new rural-life conditions. 

In the next chapter we shall consider the effects of 
these great economic and social changes on the rural 
school, and set forth something of the condition in 
which it finds itself to-day. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What changes in social relationships are noticeable in the rural 
communities you know best? 

2. How much do the farmers of your community travel? 

3. What has been the general effect of town life on the families 
which have left the farm and moved to town to obtain the edu- 
cational and social advantages found there? 

4. What has been the general effect on the rural life of the replace- 
ment of these families by tenants? 

5. What is the moral level of the villages and rural communities you 
know best? Has there been a change recently for the better or 
the worse? 

6. How much importance do the people of your community now 
attach to: — 

(a) The annual school-district meeting, or election? 
(6) The annual town or township meeting, or election? 

7. Under what circumstances has either had a large attendance 
recently? 

8. How many churches per family or per adult male are there in 
your community? 

9. What percentage of the community attend them? 

10. Judging them as community social institutions, what grade in 
social efficiency would you give them? 

11. In how far is the social aspect of the Sunday meeting still re- 
tained in your community? 

12. Calculate the number of families to each church in the Indiana 
township shown in Figure 21, and the cost per family for any- 
thing like proper maintenance. 

13. Are the churches gaining or losing? Why? 

14. What changes in church methods are required to meet present 
conditions? 



CHAPTER IV 

EFFECTS OF THESE CHANGES ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 

Origin of the district school. The rural or district 
school arose originally as essentially a local community 
undertaking. In New England it arose as a part of the 
struggle for district rights, as opposed to the control 
of the old central town. The unity of the town was 
broken, and local district schools, with full local rights 
in the matter of taxation and control, followed as a 
consequence. Everywhere to the westward, where the 
plan of district organization was carried by New Eng- 
land people, the district system and the district school 
arose in response to community needs. The simplicity 
and adaptability of the district system to community 
interests and to the needs of the pioneer settlements 
were strong features of it. Wherever half a dozen 
families were located near enough to one another to 
make cooperation for the purpose possible, and where 
an interest in the maintenance of a school existed, 
the district-organization law permitted such to meet 
together, to vote to organize a district school, to elect 
three trustees or school directors to manage it in the 
interests of the community, and to vote a tax on them- 
selves or their property to maintain the school for the 
length of time decided upon. The organization pro- 



84 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



ceedings were simple and easy. Communities which 
desired schools could organize them; communities 
which did not could let them alone. 

At first a purely local undertaking. When a school 
had once been decided upon, it became, to a marked 

degree, a commu- 
nity undertaking. 
The parents met 
and helped to build 
the schoolhouse, 
and hew out and 
install the furni- 
ture; they deter- 
mined how long 
they would main- 
tain the school; 
they frequently 
decided whom they 
desired as teacher, 
and how much they would pay the teacher in wages; 
and they all helped to provide the teacher with board 
and lodging by means of the now obsolete " boarding- 
around " arrangements. In these earlier days there 
was no body of school law of any consequence; no 
county school authorities to supervise the instruction 
of the teacher or the acts of the school trustees; al- 
most no state educational authorities; no body of edu- 
cational theory to serve as a guide; and no conception 
of education as an important function of the state. 




Fig. 22. 



A TYPICAL EARLY SCHOOL 
INTERIOR, I. 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 85 

Schools were essentially local affairs, directly related 
to local needs and local conceptions; and the extreme 
simplicity and democracy of the district system, and 
its adaptability to pioneer conditions, made it the 
natural system of the early pioneer period of our de- 
velopment. 

The demand for state schools. With the beginning 
of the second period of our agricultural development, 
we find a new interest in education beginning to mani- 
fest itself in all of the Northern States. By 1835 the 
ferment was working; in some states it had begun to 
work still earlier. With the passing of the pioneer 
period; the general full attainment of manhood suf- 
frage; the introduction of machinery and new methods 
on the farms which had been rescued from the wilder- 
ness; the beginnings of intercommunication; the intro- 
duction of the newspaper and new political discussion ; 
the growth and influence of the cities; and, a little 
later, the coming of the steam train, a new need for 
education began to be felt. Public men began to urge 
general education as a duty of the state, and the right 
to a common-school education began to be asserted as 
the natural birthright of every American boy and girl. 
With the coming of great numbers of Irish and Ger- 
mans, after 1846, public education began also to be 
urged as a necessity for the protection of the Govern- 
ment. 

By 1835 the battle for the general taxation of every 
man's property for the free education of every man*s 



86 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



■ 11 in mm ■ w riii frMTr i r 



Desk 



nl 



children was on in every Northern State; by 1850 it 
was an accompHshed fact in most of our states. By 
1870 the movement had extended into the South, and 

free common-school 
systems, with state 
and county school 
oflficers to guide and 
direct them, were 
everywhere to be 
found. Since then, 
school districts and 
schoolhouses have 
been multiplied to 
such an extent that 
schools are now found 
everywhere, while the 
principle of general 
taxation for common 
schools has been ex- 
additional forms of public 



Hats and Coats 



Fig. 23. 



A TYPICAL EARLY SCHOOL 
INTERIOR, IL 



tended to many other 
education. 

The second-period schooL The rural and the village 
school, as we find it at the close of the second period 
of our agricultural development, was still one of quite 
meager proportions. The district system was almost 
everywhere supreme, and the school still answered 
closely to the community needs and feelings. Frame 
schoolhouses were replacing the log ones, and home- 
made seats in rows in the room had displaced the 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 87 



bench around the walls; but otherwise there was no 
great change. In an effort to meet the needs of new 
population and to carry the school nearer and nearer 
to the people, the proceedings for creating new districts 
by dividing old ones were made simple and easy, and 
new school districts and new schoolhouses were rapidly 
multiplied. The schools established were often poor 
schools, measured by our modern standards, but the 
people believed in them and were satisfied with them. 
The exceedingly democratic nature of the district 
organization made the school seem '* of the people, by 
the people, and 
for the people." 
In the annual 
and special 
school -district 
meetings the 
people guided 
their represent- 
atives, and had 
an immediate 
voice in the 
management of 
the school. The 
district organi- 
zation also be- 
came a training school for the people in civil gov- 
ernment, and a means for awakening in all a con- 
ception of the needs and benefits of public education. 




Fig. 24. A SCHOOLMASTER OF THE OLD TYPE 

(After a photograph in Clifton Johnson's Old Time 
Schools and School Books. — By permission of The 
Macmillan Co.) 



88 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The people enjoyed the expression of their wishes and 
opinions in the district meeting, and district organ- 
ization, in those early days, doubtless rendered a very 
useful service. 

The early schoolmaster. In still other ways the 
early rural school endeared itself to the people. The 
earlier school-teachers were nearly all men, and they 
taught the community in which they worked, as well 
as the children. The teacher was commonly a student, 
thoughtful, judicious in his conduct, and devoted to 
his work. He may not have really known very much, 
judged by our present-day standards, but to the com- 
munity he seemed very learned. The pupils who came 
to him were of all ages, from four or five to twenty or 
twenty-one. Grading, state or county courses of study, 
and uniform textbooks had not as yet been introduced. 
Each pupil studied about what he chose, and from the 
book he happened to have. Reading and recitations 
were individual; sums were worked on the slate and 
shown to the teacher. The teacher's work was to main- 
tain order and to direct effort, rather than to hear 
pupils recite, and he strove to stimulate the children 
to make the best use of the short time they could 
attend the school. By means of the '* boarding- 
around " arrangement, under which the teacher lived 
with each family for from one to three weeks each win- 
ter, the family came to know him and he them in a 
way not now possible, and both learned much by the 
contact. The weekly meetings of the literary society 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 89 

and the spelling contests, which were held at the 
school and to which the people came for miles around, 
made the old-time school a social center for the com- 
munity life. 

Efficiency of the education for the time. One of the 
best evidences as to the hold these old-time district 
schools had on a community is the bitterness with 
which members of the older generation everywhere 
have opposed all attempts at a change in the condi- 
tions. The school, in the days of limited outlook and 
limited knowledge, was a center of the community life, 
and provided instruction which was then deemed of 
much value. Considering the limited needs of the time, 
the early rural school was remarkably efficient, and 
the recollection of this past efficiency has been a strong 
force in leading older men to oppose a change in con- 
ditions. The rural school has become endeared by 
age and by sentiment, and those who experienced its 
benefits have been most vigorous in opposing any 
changes in its organization. Regardless of the fact 
that practically all of the life conditions surrounding 
the rural school have since materially changed, these 
members of the older generation are hardest to con- 
vince that there is any need of a change in the school. 

Changes in rural education after about 1870. Dur- 
ing the third period, and especially after about 1870, 
the old conditions surrounding rural and village edu- 
cation materially changed. The years following the 
Civil War were a period of great national, industrial. 



90 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

and agricultural development. Cities began to grow 
rapidly, and to drain off the best blood from the 
country; manufacturing of all kinds experienced won- 
derful development; the old trades and small indus- 
tries of the villages began to disappear; the fron- 
tier was pushed out to and beyond the mountains; 
immigration from the north of Europe reached a 
maximum; new lands and new markets were opened 
up, and new crops introduced; and a wonderful agri- 
cultural expansion took place. Labor-saving machin- 
ery so decreased the need for farm labor as to cause, in 
many places, an actual shrinkage in the rural popula- 
tion. Life conditions also greatly changed, and the 
old educative influence of the home, the church, and 
the farm began rapidly to decline. New methods of 
procedure were introduced so rapidly that the old 
father-to-son form of instruction, which had for so long 
prevailed, gradually became inadequate. New meth- 
ods of farming, calling now for the application of sci- 
entific knowledge, began to be introduced. All of these 
changes naturally tended to make the instruction 
offered in the rural school less vital than it had pre- 
viously been. 

The change in direction. The rural and village 
school, too, now began to receive a marked change in 
direction. The school was gradually graded and reor- 
ganized. A course of study, moulded after city lines, 
was introduced for the guidance and direction of the 
teacher. Uniform textbooks were provided. New 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 



91 



studies and new methods of instruction began to 
change the old emphasis. The old literary societies 
and spelling-bees gradually died out. The new normal- 
trained female teacher now began to make her appear- 
ance, and, after 1880, the displacement of the men 
rural teachers was rapid in all parts of the country. 




'6 S ^. 

Fig. 25. DECREASING PERCENTAGE OF MEN TEACHERS 

This new teacher brought with her a new and a minute 
methodology, and the psychology of instruction for a 
time outweighed all other educational interests. In 
the mean time the division of districts went on in an 
effort to carry the school nearer to the child, and small 
and inefficient schools, lacking in money, equipment, 
and numbers, were everywhere multiplied to such an 
extent that a small one-room rural school was, before 



92 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

long, to be found every mile or two apart in any fairly 
well-settled rural community. 

The city-school influence. The marked develop- 
ment of city schools now began to exert an important 
influence. The concentration of wealth had made it 
possible, and the concentration of people of many 
different types had made it necessary, that the cities 
should develop a class of schools capable of meeting 
the changed conditions of life. The cities accordingly 
began to provide much more liberally for their chil- 
dren; high schools and supervision were added; kinder- 
gartens were organized; laboratory and other forms of 
teaching equipment were provided; and many of the 
newer branches of instruction were added, with a view 
to making their schools attractive to parents and 
useful to the community supporting them. The city 
schools, in consequence, soon became remarkably 
efficient, began to attract the attention of parents, and 
soon drew to them the best teachers and the best edu- 
cational leaders. The larger towns also developed 
graded schools and a high school, secured good teach- 
ers, provided a good building and teaching equipment, 
and did what they could to make their schools useful 
and attractive as well. 

City-school ideals soon began to dominate all educa- 
tional aims and practices. The textbooks were written 
more for them, and their commercial and cultural aims 
became of first importance. Education began to lean 
markedly toward preparation for clerical and profes- 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 93 

sional employments, and rural education began to 
lead away from farm life. The agricultural depression 
of the eighties, due largely to temporary overdevelop- 
ment, only stimulated this cityward tendency in edu- 
cation. The teacher, too, trained on methods in the 
city, came to look upon country life as a life of hard- 
ship and country service as a period of probation, and 
naturally did little or nothing to make the rural school 
minister to the needs of rural life. The poor wages 
paid rural teachers, and often the poor living con- 
ditions, only added emphasis to this tendency. The 
teacher developed little interest in the rural com- 
munity, and the community lost interest in both 
teacher and school. Families so situated as to make 
it possible sent their children to the town or the city 
for their education, while others leased their farms and 
moved to town that they might secure better educa- 
tional advantages for their children. 

Decline in efficiency. By the close of the third 
period in our agricultural development, the shrinkage 
in the rural population also began to have its effect on 
the schools. In many places there were fewer families 
on the farms than a generation before; and the families 
not infrequently had fewer children. The attendance, 
too, came to be limited to the younger children, the 
older boys and girls who once attended either going 
now to the high school in town or dropping out of 
school altogether. Schools in the rural districts began 
to lose materially in numbers, and the increasing num- 



94 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

ber of small and inefficient schools in the different 
states began to attract attention. It was clearly evi- 
dent to most observers that the rural school had lost its 
early importance, and that country people were losing 
their former interest in it. Soon the " rural-school 
problem " began to attract the attention of thoughtful 
persons, and to be discussed on the platform and in the 
educational press. The problem was early recognized, 
but just what to do about it was not so clear. 

The rural school and the fourth-period changes. 
The still greater changes which have characterized 
the fourth period in our agricultural development 
have made the problem of the rural school still more 
acute. Had it not been for the state aid which has 
been received, and the state laws which have required 
the maintenance and support of the schools and the 
attendance of the children, it is doubtful if the con- 
dition of the rural schools to-day would be any better 
than the present condition of the rural churches. The 
great changes in the whole nature of rural life, and the 
reorganization and commercializing of agriculture, 
which have taken place largely since 1890, have cre- 
ated entirely new demands on rural education even in 
the best of communities; while the decline of rural in- 
dustries and the decadence of the rural population in 
some places, and in other places the introduction of a 
poor and an uneducated foreign tenant class, have 
created a social problem which it is difficult for the 
rural school, organized as it is at present, to solve, 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 95 

The result of these many changes is that the rural- 
school problem has become so complex that the aver- 
age teacher scarcely knows what to do, or how to deal 
with the situation which confronts her; while the abso- 
lute inadequacy of the rural school of to-day to meet 
the new educational and social needs of to-morrow is 
evident to any one who has studied the problem. The 
situation calls for educational insight and leadership 
of a high order, and for a reorganization of rural 
education under some authority of larger jurisdic- 
tion and knowledge than that of the district-school 
trustee. 

New fourth-period demands. The many changes 
which have characterized the fourth period of our 
agricultural development have also created new de- 
mands on rural education which the rural schools have 
been very slow to meet. The great change in agricul- 
tural methods and the great increase in scientijSc 
knowledge relating to simple agricultural processes 
have created a new body of knowledge of fundamen- 
tal importance to country people. The old traditional 
knowledge and methods in agriculture are each year 
being relegated to the rear, and the boy of to-day fre- 
quently knows more about agricultural processes than 
his father. New standards in education have been 
created, and new demands have been made upon the 
school. With the passing of the old home conditions, 
too, when the home and the farm were places where 
nearly all of the simple arts of life were practiced, the 



96 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

demand for practical instruction relating to home life, 
to meet the changed conditions of living, has also come 
to be heard. The old limited education, based on a 
drill on the so-called fundamentals of knowledge, no 
longer suffices. It does not meet the needs of the new 
situation which has been created, nor is it extensive 
enough to meet modern needs. The farmer now wants 
high-school as well as elementary-school advantages 
for his children. 

Gradual desertion of the rural school. With the 
increasing ease with which rural people can now send 
their children to the town or city, generally to a better 
teacher and a better school, the competition of better 
education elsewhere has also contributed to the weak- 
ening of the old rural school. The more intelligent 
and the more commercially and agriculturally progres- 
sive the rural community, the more the dissatisfaction 
with the little district school expresses itself, and the 
more the school suffers as a consequence. The cumula- 
tive effect of these many changes has been manifest not 
only in a decline in attendance and importance of the 
rural school, but also in an increasing demand that 
rural education should execute a right-about-face and 
begin seriously to minister to these new needs of coun- 
try life. The old subjects of instruction need to be 
reorganized and redirected, new subjects of instruction 
added, and teachers with an understanding of rural 
needs found and trained. 

" The strong, virile, rural school of a generation 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 97 

ago," says a recent writer on the subject/ " has gone, 
and in its place is a primary school weak in numbers 
and lacking in efficiency. School buildings are poor, 
unsanitary, and ill-equipped. The school enrollment 
is constantly decreasing. The supervision is wholly 
inadequate. The cost of instruction is higher than in 
the cities. The terms are short. The teaching body is 
immature and lacks proper training. Of the 12,000,000 
rural-school children, constituting a clear majority of 
the youth of school age, less than 25 per cent are com- 
pleting the work of the grades." 

Present inadequacy of the old education. The great 
changes of the past twenty years which have marked 
the urbanization of rural life have also had their effect 
on the little country school. With the hundreds of new 
interests which have been brought home to country 
people, and the wider contact with people and with 
life, the old type of rural-school education has ceased 
to satisfy as it once did. With the new interests enter- 
ing the home, and the decline in importance of the 
church, new problems in moral as well as intellectual 
education have come to the front. The inadequacy of 
the old book education is gradually becoming appar- 
ent, and it is seen that the education of children must 
involve the moral and physical, as well as a new type 
of the intellectual. 

The introduction of commercialized agriculture, on 

1 E. T. Fairchild, President of the Agricultural College of New 
Hampshire, and formerly State Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion of Kansas. 



98 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the one hand, and the introduction of farm tenantry, on 
the other, have alike further comphcated the problem 
of the rural school. Neither the owner nor the tenant 
has the same interest in the little rural school as had 
the farmer of the home-builder type, and neither is 
now interested in its support. As a result the schools 
have in many places declined in attendance or been 
closed, while in others the former complexion of the 
school population has been largely or entirely changed. 
With the changing tenantry, from one third to one 
half of the children are new to the school each year. 
The children change, the trustees change, and the 
interest in the maintenance of a good school declines. 
As the newer type of farm tenants comes in, the homo- 
geneous character of the school population is broken, 
and a social problem is created which tends further to 
the disintegration of the rural school. 

Breakdown of the old administrative system. Under 
the stress of the new conditions, the old supervision of 
the school by district authorities has also completely 
broken down. A half -century ago it was possible for 
the locally-elected trustees or school directors to direct 
the teacher and to supervise the instruction fairly well. 
Aside from the discipline and the material environment 
there was little to supervise. To-day, with the newer 
conceptions of educational work, and the new social, 
industrial, and educational problems facing the rural 
school, the need for intelligent direction and leadership 
is far beyond what any but the most intelligent com- 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 99 

munities can supply. The rural-life problem is now 
far too complex and far too difficult to be solved by- 
isolated local effort. Inexpert local authority does not 
have the grasp of the newer problem necessary to con- 
tribute much toward its solution. 




Increasing Cost of Education.per 
Pupil in Average Daily.Attendance 



Fig. 26. INCREASING COST OF EDUCATION, PER PUPIL, IN 
AVERAGE DAILY ATTENDANCE 

Increasing needs and cost. Perhaps the most serious 
difficulty which the rural schools have had to face 
within the past two decades has been the financial one. 
The many changes in the character of public educa- 
tion, which have been marked features of our recent 
development, have all tended to increase its cost, and 
this increasing cost has borne heavily on the rural 



100 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

school. Everywhere the demands of the state have 
increased, and parallel to this has been the constantly 
increasing cost of all living. Since about 1895 these 
two forces have united, and the effect in all parts of the 
United States is shown in the accompanying chart. 
The state, on its part, has been insistent that the 
character of the school should be improved, and to 
that end has demanded longer school terms, better 
schoolhouses and sanitary appliances, better-trained 
and better-educated teachers, and higher taxation for 
schools. On the other hand, the cities have rapidly 
increased their wages and other educational expenses, 
thus enabling them to draw off the best teachers from 
the rural districts. The teachers, too, have experienced 
the increasing cost of living, and with the possibilities 
open of going to the city or of changing to other forms 
of better-paid employment, have demanded and ob- 
tained better yearly salaries. New schoolhouses and 
supplies of all kinds have also cost more than formerly. 
Longer terms have been provided, and the laws of a 
number of states have recently fixed a minimum wage 
for teachers, and have required that rural districts 
shall also pay the tuition of such of their pupils as 
attend the neighboring high schools. 

The burden of taxation. All of these increases in cost 
have meant increased taxation. In rural communities 
where the third-period conditions still prevail, and 
where the sturdy home-builder type of farmer is the 
rule, the increased prices received for farm products 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 101 

have made it possible to meet the increased rate with- 
out serious effort. On the other hand, where farm ten- 
antry has come to be the rule, the burden naturally falls 
upon the non-resident owners, who are now but little 
interested either in maintaining or in improving the 




Fig. 27. INCREASING LENGTH OF TERM, IN DAYS 



rural school. In such cases the increases have natu- 
rally been resisted. In regions where intensive market 
gardening as a business, conducted by a non-resident 
owner, or where the large corporation farm, man- 
aged as a business undertaking, has been created, the 
owners of the land are naturally not vitally inter- 
ested in the maintenance of what often seems to them 
an unnecessary number of small and ineflScient rural 
schools. 



102 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Present plight of the rural school. The result of 
these many changes in rural-life conditions, brought 
about by the changing economic and social conditions 
which we have previously described more or less in 
detail, is that the rural school has lost its earlier im- 
portance and finds itself to-day in a somewhat sorry 
plight. It is no longer, generally speaking, the impor- 
tant community institution which it was forty or fifty 
years ago. It has largely ceased to minister, as it once 
did, to community needs; its teacher no longer plays 
the important part in neighborhood affairs that he 
used to play; it has lost much of its earlier importance 
as a community center; its attendance has frequently 
shrunk to a small fraction of what it once was; it finds 
itself in a serious financial condition; and it has been 
left far behind, educationally, by the progress which 
the schools of the neighboring towns and cities have 
made. Managed as it has been by rural people, them- 
selves largely lacking in educational insight, penurious, 
and with no comprehensive grasp of their own prob- 
lems, the rural school, except in a few places, has prac- 
tically stood still. The increased standards for certifi- 
cation have, very properly, prevented the untrained 
and relatively uneducated country girl from serving as 
a teacher, while the city-trained and too often city- 
sick teacher, with little comprehension of rural life or 
interest in rural people, and with no training to fit her 
to minister to the real community needs, has not con- 
tributed anything of importance to the solution of the 



EFFECTS ON THE RURAL SCHOOL 103 

rural-school problem. This problem, tied up as it is 
with the whole rural-life problem, has now become too 
complex to be solved by local effort alone, and nothing 
short of a reorganization of rural education, along good 
educational and administrative lines, will meet the 
needs of the present and of the future. This reorganiza- 
tion it shall be our purpose, in the second part, to out- 
line somewhat in detail. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. About when, so far as you can learn, did the schools of your 
community experience the change in direction described on pp. 
90-91? 

2. Assuming that no state or county aid for schools had been 
granted, and no laws requiring the maintenance of schools had 
existed, during the past half-century, in what condition would 
the rural schools of your district be to-day? How would they 
compare in efficiency with the churches? 

3. How strong are your rural schools in the afiFections of the more 
intelligent rural people? 

4. How do the number and size of the rural schools of your com- 
munity compare with conditions ten years ago? 

5. Explain what are some of the new demands on rural educa- 
tion brought about by the changes of the fourth period of our 
agricultural development. 

6. Why has farm tenantry tended to prevent increased support for 
rural schools? 

7. In what ways has the district system of school administration 
broken down under the stress of the new conditions? 

8. The educational demands of the state should increase rather 
than decrease. If they do, what will be the effect on rural 
education? 

9. Are the people of your community satisfactorily solving the 
rural-school problem, or not? 

10. Have you any examples in your county of revitalized and 
redirected rural schools? 

11. Are your rural schools centers for the community life? 



CHAPTER V 

RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 

Reconstruction and reorganization necessary. The 
great changes which have taken place during the past 
half-century in practically all of the conditions sur- 
rounding rural life have created a rural-life problem of 
large dimensions, which we are now beginning to recog- 
nize and to try to solve. The mere enumeration of the 
changes which have taken place, and the statement of 
the condition in which almost all of the old-established 
institutions of rural society find themselves to-day, as 
given in the preceding chapters, are sufficient to show 
the need of a remodeling and a redirecting of these 
old institutions if they are to continue to render useful 
service. Their reconstruction and reorganization are 
necessary if rural society is to meet successfully the 
changed conditions of modern rural life. Temporary 
palliatives and expedients may be applied, and tem- 
porary defense work may be employed, and perhaps 
with some temporary success ; but only a fundamental 
reorganization will place rural social institutions and 
rural life in a condition to meet effectively the needs 
of the future. Such reconstruction and reorganiza- 
tion ought to be comprehensive and fundamental, 
and because of this, naturally will require time for 
accomplishment. 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 105 

The educational deficiency. The main single defi- 
ciency in rural life to-day is the lack of enough of the 
right kind of education. The general lack of scientific 
knowledge relating to farming and to the needs of rural 
home life, on the part of rural people, has long been a 
common observation ^ Conversely, the main single 
remedy which must be applied to the rural-life prob- 
lem is educational, and consists largely in a redirection 
of rural education itself. \ By means of a redirected 
education, we may hope to disseminate new knowledge 
relating to rural-life needs and problems; to teach 
young people simple agricultural facts and processes; 
to awaken a deep love for the open country on the 
part of those born there and a desire to live there; to 
develop better standards of taste for estimating pleas- 
ures and attractions outside the farm; to stir into ac- 
tion community forces which are now dormant; and 
to make of the rural school a strong and efl5cient social 
center, working for the upbuilding of all the varied 
interests of a healthy rural life. \ Because the rural 
school is to-day in a state of arrested development, 
burdened by educational traditions, lacking in effec- 
tive supervision, controlled largely by rural people, 
who, too often, do not realize either their own needs 
or the possibilities of rural education, and taught by 
teachers who, generally speaking, have but little com- 
prehension of the rural-life problem or of the possibil- 
ities of a reorganized and redirected rural school, the 
task of reorganizing and redirecting rural education is 



/ 



106 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

difficult, and will necessarily be slow. This reorganiza- 
tion and redirection of rural education, is, however, the 
main key to the solution of the rural-life problem, and 
the sooner it can be accomplished the better it will be 
for rural life. The lines along which this must be car- 
ried out are given in some detail in the second part of 
this volume, and we accordingly postpone further con- 
sideration of this need until we reach the second part. 
The great rural social problem. The real underlying 
social problem, though, which faces us in a considera- 
tion of the rural-life problem of to-day, is that of how 
to maintain a satisfactory American civilization on the 
farms of our nation. Large-tract commercial farming 
by individuals or by companies, on the one hand, and 
farm tenantry on the other, are not conducive to such 
an end, and are not best for rural life or for the state. 
Farm-ownership by the many rather than by the few, 
and farm ownership rather than farm tenantry, are 
what are most desired, j The typical American farmer 
of the past has been essentially a man of the intelligent 
middle class, owning a medium-sized farm, maintain- 
ing a good standard of living, educating his children 
well, and he himself interested in the neighborhood and 
in local affairs. Such he still is in the great majority 
of places. How to preserve this standard, and how to 
develop such standards in the new farmers, is a very 
important social and educational question. As much 
as possible, we want to retain on the farm, as farmers, 
a class which represents the best type of American 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 107 

manhood and womanhood, and to whom the farm is, 
before all else, a home. 

Ownership vs. tenantry. The upward evolution 
from laborer to tenant, and from tenant to owner, 
needs to be encouraged as much as possible. Con- 
versely, the change from ownership to tenantry is 
unfortunate, and can be prevented, in part, by better 
education and by better laws. The ownership of land 
is the poor man's rock of defense. With free lands 
practically at an end, and with land values rising 
rapidly, the power of the laborer to save and to accu- 
mulate enough to buy a small farm is becoming harder 
each decade. While land is still cheap, the poor man 
should be educated to thrift and helped to ultimate 
land-ownership; and the man of small means who 
owns a farm should be prevented from losing it by 
reason of poor farming methods. The struggle, in the 
near future, for land and the food it will produce will 
be severe indeed. 

The foreign tenant understands the importance of 
land-ownership much better than does the native 
American. The Italian, in particular, seems to have a 
genius for saving and obtaining the possession of land. 
The Slav, the Armenian, and the Japanese have also 
much ability in this direction, as has also the better- 
educated Negro in the South. Among the earlier immi- 
grants, this was a marked characteristic of the Scotch, 
Germans, and Scandinavians. These newly arrived 
tenants and evolving landowners, white or black, are 



108 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

everywhere in need of educational assistance and guid- 
ance. They need, in particular, such education as will 
enable them to rise gradually to the best American 
farming standards, and to create a good type of Amer- 
ican home. With such help it is surprising how rapidly 
the Italian, Bulgar, Russian Slav, American Indian, 
or Southern Negro develops into a good type of home- 
owning American farmer. 

Important rural economic interests. Up to very 
recently the one effort of the National Department of 
Agriculture and of the state colleges of agriculture has 
been to increase the yield of farm crops, to eliminate 
pests and diseases, and to improve the breeds of seeds, 
trees, and farm animals. This has been very valuable, 
and was essentially the right thing to do in the begin- 
ning. Still more, such scientific work ought to be 
continued with energy. Our national food-needs in the 
near future make the promotion of national safety in 
the matter of a food-supply an important function of 
both state and national governments. All this, too, 
tends to make farming more profitable, and unless 
agriculture can first be made remunerative to men and 
women of energy and capacity, farm life will never 
prove satisfying to the class we most desire to retain on 
the farms. Economic betterment must come first, and 
without this all attempts at educational, social, and 
moral betterment are to a large degree superficial and 
transitory. Better farming and better business meth- 
ods must precede better living. 



RURAI. LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 109 

Great rural interests human interests. The great 
rural interests, however, are the essentially human 
interests, and the really important questions in the 
rural-life problem are how to improve the conditions 
surrounding human life in the open country, so as to 
make farm life less solitary, freer from sheer drudgery. 



60 






_ 








1 










40 


















■ 


80 
























90 
























10 






























1 

















I EnroUmeat. | 3-^,. | afS^L | 



Teachers salaries. 



I I Kmal. 

Fig. 28. RESULTS SHOWN BY THE CENSUS OF 1910 



fuller of opportunity, and more comfortable and 
attractive to the best farming people. We hope ulti- 
mately to double the yield of corn and wheat and 
cotton, which would, indeed, be a great achievement; 
but an even more important undertaking would be 
that which would double the comfort, happiness, and 
attractiveness of life on the farm to the farmer, his 
wife, and his children. After all, the farmer and his 



110 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

family are more important than his crops, and the 
conditions which surround rural family life are more 
important than those which surround the raising of 
cows and pigs. 

The magnitude and the national importance of such 
a problem in rural improvement will be appreciated 
better if we remember that nearly one half of the 
people of the United States still live on farms, and 
nearly one half of the children of our country are still 
educated in the rural schools. This is well shown in 
Figure 28, for the United States as a whole; while 
the map on page 112 shows the percentages of the 
total population living in the rural districts in each of 
the states of the Union. The high percentage of rural 
population in the important agricultural states of the 
North Central and the Southern groups, as shown by 
this map, reveals how largely the problem of rural and 
agricultural improvement is there a problem of rural 
education. 

FUNDAMENTAL RURAL NEEDS 

To make agriculture remunerative and family life 
in the country attractive and satisfying to intelligent 
and progressive people, both of which are necessary 
if we are to make much headway in improving rural 
life, certain fundamental rural needs should be met. 
In addition to a redirection of rural education, which 
will be dealt with in detail in the second part of this 
book, these may be briefly summarized, as follows : — 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 111 

1. Retention of Personality 

The great economic success of the farmer has tended, 
in certain regions, to eliminate him from the rural 
community, and the disintegration of many rural 
communities is traceable in large part to this eco- 
nomic success, to the poor education provided, and 
to a lack of standards by which to measure the 
value of the city pleasures and attractions. The 
removal of the more successful farmers to town, as 
well as the desertion of the farm by the more enterpris- 
ing and more energetic children, have alike tended to 
rob many rural regions of those men and women of 
forceful personality who alone give tone and charac- 
ter to a community. The result has been to pro- 
duce, in many rural regions, that flat level of equal- 
ity where little or no progress is possible. The same 
has been true of little towns, many of which to-day are 
stagnant because all the boys of ability and all the 
girls who could get away have deserted them for the 
greater opportunities and attractions of the city. In 
the upper part of the Mississippi Valley one may find 
hundreds of such little towns, where leadership seems 
to have disapj>eared, and where the people seem to 
have quarantined against progress. One does not find 
such conditions in the newer agricultural communities 
of the West or the Southwest, chiefly because the ini- 
tiative and spirit of the pioneer are still there. In 
the older agricultural communities of the Mississippi 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 113 

Valley, though, this spirit is too often entirely lacking, 
and for the reason that the stronger and the more 
capable have gone. The community life, such as it is, 
no longer appeals to the best; the fundamental social 
instincts remain unsatisfied; and the higher intellec- 
tual and spiritual life is not ministered unto. The 
country seems lonely, monotonous, and common- 
place; it lacks personality and leadership; and its 
lack of sociability seems depressing to the young. 
Poor roads; poor residences; poor schools; decaying 
churches; low sesthetic standards; low intellectual 
ideals; lack of cooperation and harmony; soil-depletion 
by unwise farming; often almost a contempt of scien- 
tific agriculture; lack of good business methods; and a 
disregard of hygienic laws; — all alike tend to reduce 
the remuneration from farming, and to obscure, to old 
and young alike, the many advantages of rural life to 
those adapted to it. 

The school and personality. To change this condi- 
tion is the problem before us. That the schools, man- 
aged as they have been mainly by country people, are 
largely responsible for the condition in which country 
communities find themselves to-day, there can be 
little question. The away-from-the-farm influence of 
rural education in the past and its lack of adaptability 
to rural needs have been its marked characteristics. 
That the schools must be the chief agent in turning 
the current in the other direction, there also can be 
but little question. The farming industry represents 



114 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

a large element in our civilization, and schools in the 
country, if they are to be effective rural institutions, 
must represent the civilization of their time and 
location. 

A fundamental need of rural life of to-day is local 
institutions which will select and train virile men and 
women, men and women of personality and force, for 
effective living in the open country. This must be 
accomplished chiefly by appealing to country people 
themselves, and by offering an education for country 
living which will reveal to young men and young 
women the opportunities and possibilities of life on 
the farm. The movement of city people to the open 
country is not likely to accomplish much in improv- 
ing conditions, except in the case of little towns, and 
where such people come as suburban residents rather 
than as farmers. 

2. Larger Life and Outlook 

Another fundamental need is the broadening of 
rural life and the giving to it a larger outlook. The 
fundamental social instincts of youth — recreation, 
play, friendships, social life — must be provided 
for and allowed to satisfy themselves. Many a bo^^ 
and girl have been driven from the farm by rea- 
son of the life there being all work and no play. 
In many rural communities there is no community 
life, — no body of accumulated common experi- 
ence, no common meeting-ground and no meetings 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 115 

throughout the year, no church, no store, no society, — 
and the young people early form a distaste for the life 
this represents. This needs changing. Sports and 
games should be provided, time for recreation allowed, 
and the play instinct guided. Social meetings for the 
young people, under proper conditions, are needed. 
Rural clubs of various kinds, for both boys and girls, 
should be organized and directed. The fundamental 
pedagogical principle of guidance rather than repres- 
sion needs to be kept in mind in dealing with the 
young. The elders, too, need to be brought together in 
friendly social meeting, that the rural outlook may be 
enlarged and some sort of social cooperation estab- 
lished. The need for one or more social centers for 
every rural community to satisfy these needs will be 
apparent. 

3. Better Homes 

For the girls and the women, too, life in the 
country is too often most unattractive, and too 
often unnecessarily harsh and exhausting. Gener- 
ally speaking, they have a much harder time than the 
men and boys. Successful farming, though, is essen- 
tially a partnership business between a man and a 
woman, and much of the success of the undertaking 
depends upon the woman. Whatever can be done to 
make her work simpler and easier to do, and to enable 
her to develop some other interests than mere house- 
work, ought to be done for the sake of farming effi- 



116 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

ciency, if not for humane reasons. A farmer ought to 
take as good care of his chief human burden^bearer as 
he does of his brood-mare or his prize fat-producing 
cow. Too often the man takes all the advantages, and 
gives the woman few or none. He buys the best of 
machinery, drives good horses to his buggy or drives 
an automobile, and builds good barns for his grain and 
his stock. Often machinery for pumping water and 
doing other labor is installed, to save the labor of 
hired men. Yet, notwithstanding his clear perception 
of the importance of labor-saving machinery when 
applied to farm work, and of proper housing for his 
stock, the residence, where the women do the work 
and the children grow up and have their tastes formed, 
is often almost entirely devoid of labor-saving con- 
veniences. Often it is inconveniently arranged, small, 
crowded, and ugly as well. There is little doubt but 
that the desire of the women to escape from the hard 
labor and the unattractive surroundings by moving to 
the city, to secure city conveniences and better resi- 
dences, has been a strong influence in the cityward 
movement of farmers' families during the past decade. 
Better kitchens. The narrow life of the women, 
with its^ drudgery and lack of outlook, is seriously in 
need of improvement. Domestic labor on the farm is 
hard to get, so that the woman's part should be sim- 
plified as much as possible. As new farmhouses are 
constructed, or old ones repaired, they should be con- 
structed with a view to making the housework easy 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 117 

to do, and labor-saving devices, to make easier the lot 
of women, ought to be installed. It has been calculated 
that for from $500 to $1500, varying with the extent 
and size of the equipment, there can be installed in any 
farmhouse practically all of the conveniences which 
city people to-day enjoy. The gasoline engine and the 
electric motor have made it possible greatly to simplify 
housework on the farm. Running water, within and 
without the house; washing and ironing by machinery; 
vacuum cleaning; and, where electric current is avail- 
able, lighting and cooking by electricity, are now within 
the reach of the farm home. A little money put into 
homes in which it is easy to do housework, and which 
are easy to keep clean, will do much toward making 
rural life more attractive to both women and children. 
Add to this a comfortable, well-planned, and an archi- 
tecturally attractive house, with lawn, flowers, and 
long-lived trees about it, and we have a combination 
which is of fundamental importance in instilling a love 
for home-life in the country. 

4- A Community Center 

Perhaps the greatest social need of rural communi- 
ties is some kind of a community center, where men, 
women, and children may meet frequently, for various 
educational and social purposes. Life, once narrowly 
individualistic, is to-day essentially social and coopera- 
tive, and the relations of man to man, and the re- 
sponsibility of man for his neighbor and his neighbor's 



118 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



E 



Kink and 
Dance 
Hall. 



ca 



General 
Store 



m 



H 



J'S 



child, were never so strongly emphasized as they are 
to-day. Education has given a new importance to 
youth, and life to-day holds new and enlarged values 
for both old and young. In a city, by reason of the many 
means of social contact and the closeness of man to 
man, cooperative efforts for the common good and the 

public welfare 
are easy to start 
and to carry 
along. In the 
country, though, 
where people are 
so separated by 
mere distance, 
and so strongly 
individualistic, 
it is much more 
diflScult to secure 
effective cooper- 
ation, and the need of a common meeting-place and 
of a community center to develop a community life 
and spirit is more important than in the towns and 
cities. 

Early centers for the community life. In the earlier 
days the barn-raisings, huskings and quilting-bees, 
and singing-schools afforded opportunity for such con- 
tact, but these have long since passed away. The 
earlier school, with its spelling-matches and literary 
societies, also once contributed much to this end. But 







D 







Fig. 30. A COMMUNITY CENTER OF LARGE 
INFLUENCE, IN THE WRONG DIRECTION 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 119 



r^HM 


leficsvs 




C/IMPBeiL-S 




WMlTA/rfS 

\ A 








.0.. i 
...» ^ 

J 




AftmuM'S 



Kaff/irvrrsrs 
or 

FOR/!S£ CROPS 

/IND 

ROOT CROPS 



A 


/srYSM-COffV 

3*6 » -ciove» 


'/a A 




B 


2^o « -ciovrp 

Jw « -COPA/ 






£- 


/tryf^/f-CiOl^SP 
2h0 u -COPN 
3»a « -GPAIN 






Fig. 31. DIAGRAM OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY-CENTER 

Including school, church, town hall, and industrial plant. Reproduced 
here from Circular Si, Office of Experiment Stations, U.S. Department of 
Agriculture. 



120 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the spelling-matches and the literary societies have now 
ceased to exist. The church once answered the need, 
but to-day sectarianism, the dying-out of the old kind 
of faith, the lack of a social program, and the immi- 
gration of new peoples have destroyed its former hold, 
while new interests and new knowledge have carried 
the community in other directions. In most rural com- 
munities to-day there is no community center worthy 
of the name, and as a result the increasing social needs 
of the people remain unsatisfied. There is no common 
community experience or interest; the community does 
not meet together from one year's end to another, 
and it is never united in any worthy cooperative effort. 
In such communities narrow attitudes are common; 
there is no community interest in progress; the children 
lack social intercourse under good conditions, and do 
not learn the value of cooperative effort; the intellec- 
tual life is stagnant, the moral and religious life fre- 
quently ebbs; while drunkenness, vulgarity, and licen- 
tiousness increase. 

The need of a rural community-center, in which the 
community life may find itself, and then express it- 
self, and of vitalized rural institutions which will make 
for progress and tend to attach men and women to the 
soil, are fundamental needs for rural progress to-day. 
Social cooperation is needed even more than economic 
cooperation, and the means of securing it must be 
found. It may be that a rural social center may be 
created at the church, the Grange hall, the town hall, 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 121 



the rural library, or the rural school, or by combining 
all at some central place; but somewhere and somehow 
community centers need to be established in each rural 
community. The women and children need such a 
meeting-place even more than do the men. 

(a) Can the church become such a center now ? 
The possibilities of 
the church meeting 
this need and be- 
coming a center for 
the community life 
are, in most com- 
munities, relatively 
small. Before it can 
do so the church 
must be reorgan- 
ized along entirely 
new lines. 

One of the first 
needs of our rural 
and village churches, 
if they are to serve, 
is the great curtail- 
ment and, if possible, the abolition of denomination- 
alism. The small number of farmers, the changed 
rural class, the new life interests and conditions, and 
the rising cost of church maintenance all alike call 
for a uniting of forces for religious work and service. 
The present system of little struggling churches in- 




-/Siffi^"'"'"'"' 



Fig. 32. UNION CHURCH, PROCTOR, VT. 

A $35,000 marble "many-roomed" church erected 
and used by twelve different denominations. These 
include Catholic, Episcopalian, Friends, Reformed 
Hungarian, Unitarian, Universalists, Presbyterians, 
Christians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Bap- 
tists, and Free Baptists. All unite in maintaining 
one efficient and serving church. 



122 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

volves great financial and moral waste, divides rural 
people instead of uniting them, and destroys the op- 
portunity of the church for large institutional useful- 
ness. 

The problem is no longer one of getting more 
churches, but rather of uniting the ones we now have 
into stronger and more effective working bodies. This, 
though, is very difficult of accomplishment, as rural 
people are preeminently hard to unify or to organize. 
The nature of their vocation emphasizes individual- 
ity and independence, and new proposals are usually 
received by them with anything but enthusiasm. 
Denominationalism, too, is very strong with many 
people, particularly those of the older generation, and 
not much can be expected at present along this much- 
needed line of unification. Still, federation and cooper- 
ation embody the dominant spirit of the age we are 
now entering, and the church must fall in line or be 
left behind. 

Need of a program for social work. If the church is 
to play any important part in rural reorganization, it 
must evolve a program for social betterment and make 
its ministrations such as will enable it to render effec- 
tive social service. Only a giving church is a growing 
church. There are many real needs of rural people 
which to-day call for ministration, and the church 
should set itself the task of finding these and then 
trying to serve them. Then only will its religion be- 
come vital and effective. The old one-room meeting- 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 123 

house, used for a few hours a week by a few people, 
and solely for religious service, is an economic waste, 
and needs gradually to give way to a many-roomed 
social church,^ with tentacles reaching out in many 
directions and seeking for new points of contact with 
the community life. 

Need for cooperation. The church must also unite 
in cooperative effort with all of the other great forces 
working for the upbuilding of rural life, such as the 
Grange, the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A., boys' and 
girls' clubs, farmers' institutes, district nurses, the 
library, and the school, and these in turn should coop- 
erate with every living and serving church. The home, 
the school, the vocation, and the social life of the com- 
munity are all important forces in moulding the 
Uioughts and aspirations of men, and ought not to be 
neglected. One great difficulty in trying to aid the 
rural church is that so many churches and so many 
ministers have not as yet learned that we live to-day 
in a new world, and that people of to-day have more 
than one fundamental interest in life. In a few places, 
however, the church has accomplished such an inter- 
nal reform, and is to-day rendering social and religious 
service of fundamental importance in the improvement 
and redirection of rural life. In the next chapter we 
shall describe a few examples of such worthy religious 
service. 

* For a description of such a many-roomed church, see chap- 
ter VI, p. 135. 



124 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

(b) Rural organizations. The Grange hall has been 
suggested as a possible community center, and has 
been so employed in some places. The town hall has 
also been so used in a few places. The rural Y.M.C.A. 
has also been made effective here and there. All of 
these may prove useful community forces in certain 
places, and all should be encouraged to extend their 
usefulness. All rural residents, however, may not 
belong to the Grange; the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A. 
appeal especially to the young; and the town hall 
possesses certain rather obvious limitations. All such 
organizations, as well as boys' and girls* clubs, farm- 
ers' institutes, lecture courses, and extension centers, 
while an important part of rural social life, are much 
more in the nature of adjuncts to, than centers for, 
the community life. The Grange hall, perhaps, comes 
nearer to providing a center for the community life 
than any of the other organizations mentioned above. 
In the next chapter the work of the Grange will be 
described more in detail. 

(c) The rural library. The rural district library, 
where such an institution exists, comes nearer to pro- 
viding a center for the community life than any of the 
other rural institutions, so far mentioned. It is a com- 
mon property of all, is supported by all, and hence has 
a democracy about it which the church and the Grange 
do not as a rule have. The greatest difficulty met with 
is that the rural library in so many states is non- 
existent, while in states where it does exist, it is too 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 125 

often without a home of sufficient size or attractiveness 
to meet the needs of a community center. The rural 
library, too, is usually a purely passive agent, the 
librarian merely keeping the books neatly arranged on 
the shelves and handing them out, on demand; whereas 
it ought instead to be an active, energetic agent for the 
improvement of rural community life. The women, in 
particular, ought to be brought to use the rural library, 
and a rural librarian ought not to feel satisfied if the 
mothers and the young people do not come frequently 
to use the room and the books. They will do this, 
though, only if the library ministers to a vital com- 
munity need. Perhaps it is when connected with the 
school that the library will reach its greatest degree of 
usefulness. 

(d) The school. If the school can be reorganized 
and redirected, as described in Part ii of this book, it 
is possible to create, in every rural community, an 
admirable center for the fullest expression of the com- 
munity life. It is the one rural institution, excepting 
the library, which is supported by all and equally open 
to all. It represents no church, no party, no organiza- 
tion, no lodge, and no single group or interest, but 
rather all such organizations united together for the 
common welfare. It possesses a great advantage over 
all the other institutions so far mentioned in that its 
labors are directed to the education and improvement 
of the children of all the people, and this can be used 
as a great unifying idea. Without attempting to go 



126 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

into detail here, it may be said that it is possible so to 
change and so to redirect the rural school that the 
building will become the community meeting-place, 
with the other community interests centering about 
it, and the school itself will become a center for the 
improvement of the community life. In Part ii we 
shall describe, in some detail, how this may be done. 

5. Community Life 

The rural-life problem, as we stated at the begin- 
ning of this chapter, is one calling for a reconstruction 
and a reorganization of rural social institutions. The 
old institutions need to be reorganized, redirected, 
and quickened into new life. The place (or places) 
where this new life may find itself and express itself 
we have called the community center. Whether this 
center for the community life shall be at the church, 
at the Grange, at the library, or at the school, de- 
pends upon which one of the number first discovers 
its opportunity and renders that service to the rural 
community which will make of it a center for the 
community life. 

Constructive rural service. The need is for some 
unifying rural institution which will quicken the com- 
munity life and focus its efforts along worthy lines of 
action. The improvement of roads and roadsides; the 
abatement of eyesores and nuisances; the carrying- 
through of a community plan for health and sanitary 
improvement; the formation of civic organizations; the 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 127 

improvement of schools; the development of recreation 
centers; the holding of contests and fetes; inspection 
trips; the organization of boys' and girls' clubs; meet- 
ing in school and farmers' institutes; the organization 
of hospital associations; the holding of lectures; read- 
ing and extension courses; grain- and stock- judging 
exhibits; fruit and poultry shows; — these are some of 
the results which follow a quickened rural community 
life, and nearly all of which may take place at a prop- 
erly arranged rural community-center. 

The moral life of country people needs to be dealt 
with, too, though by constructive service, and not 
by repression and prohibition. The play instinct of 
young people needs to be ministered unto and guided. 
Playgrounds, dramatic and literary activities, and 
boy-scouts' and camp-fire girls' movements should be 
encouraged. The life of the farm-hand, the working- 
girl, and the poor tenant farmer offer a challenge to the 
activity and effectiveness of the church. The Grange 
should lead in the matter of cooperative organization 
and civic improvement. The school and the library 
should meet the needs of the community for knowl- 
edge, and energetically stimulate the intellectual life. 
The community center, wherever it may be devel- 
oped, should serve as a rallying-point for all of these 
forces for the improvement of rural life. 

The call for rural service. The development of a 
new and a better country life is largely a question of 
education and guidance. New knowledge, new ideals. 



128 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

wise counsel and advice, new stimuli, and guidance 
and direction are needed. The call for young men and 
women of personality, energy, capacity, convictions, 
and aspirations, who like the open country and will 
live there and work for agricultural and community 
advancement, is a call which is long and loud. To 
ministers, educated farmers, physicians, editors, libra- 
rians, and teachers, the call comes with especial clear- 
ness and force. Nothing less than the creation of a 
new rural life, the creation of new standards and 
values with reference to life on the farm, and the crea- 
tion of new rural institutions which will better minis- 
ter to the needs of rural people, is what is aimed to be 
accomplished. 

Meaning of the country-life movement. To 
awaken a new appreciation of the beauties of sky and 
field and wood; to create new standards for the ap- 
preciation of rural life and freedom; to reveal farming 
as the application of the subtlest laws of nature, as 
revealed by science; to ameliorate the harsh condi- 
tions, the loneliness, and the isolation of rural life; to 
make it a remunerative undertaking; to conserve the 
home and to develop a happy, intelligent, and re- 
sourceful people; to secure social, as well as economic, 
cooperation; to improve the educational and spiritual 
advantages provided for country people and country 
children; and, withal, to make life in the small village 
and in the open country more productive of health, 
pleasure, and profit, — these are some of the important 



RURAL LIFE AND NEEDS OF TO-DAY 129 

objects of the rural-life movement of to-day. All 
fundamental improvement of rural-life conditions, 
while it may be aided by wise legislation and stimu- 
lated into activity by others, must, after all, be carried 
through by the rural people themselves. To guide and 
to aid them in their efforts ought to be the great mis- 
sion of the church, the library, and the school, and of 
these the school easily stands first, if it can rise to meet 
the opportunities which confront it. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Indicate means whereby the rural school may teach and incul- 
cate the different items enumerated on page 105. 

2. In what way is the rural school burdened by traditions? 

3. Would the improvement of agriculture by national and state 
agencies be desirable, if no human interests were involved? 

4. Would the improvement of the human side of rural life by the 
state and the nation be a legitimate undertaking, if no agri- 
cultural interests were involved? 

6. Explain the reason for the difference between the average 
attendance figures and those for aggregate attendance, in 
Fig. 28. 

6. Is it the poor or the high-priced lands of your community which 
have come under tenancy? 

7. How far is strong personality retained in your community ? 
In what direction, if any, is the change taking place? 

8. What is the character of the villages of your county in the 
matter of personality? 

9. Why must the chief work in improving rural society be accom- 
plished by appealing to country people themselves? 

10. How can the improvement of rural social life for the young be 
made to contribute to the improvement of adult rural society? 

11. What percentage of the farmhouses of the community you 
know best would you say have good working kitchens? 

12. What future effect on home and kitchen designing and equip- 
ment do you think would be the result of introducing instruc- 
tion in domestic science, using good equipment, in all of the 
rural schools? 



130 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

13. Of what do your community centers consist, and what is the 
nature of their influence? 

14. What is the character of the villages in your county, in the 
matter of helpfulness to rural life.? 

15. Have you known of any unions of churches? 

16. Explain why the nature of the farmer's vocation emphasizes 
individuality and independence, and makes it difficult to 
interest farmers in cooperative undertakings. 

17. To what extent does the school occupy the place of a center 
for the community life? 

18. To what extent is the play instinct, the literary instinct, the 
domestic instinct, and the social instinct ministered unto by the 
rural community life in your community? 

19. How much of the program for constructive rural service, given 
on pages 126-127, is carried out in your community? By whom, 
and with what degree of effectiveness? 

20. How far does the school reveal to the young people in it the 
deeper meanings of rural life, as indicated on page 128? 

21. Explain what is meant by the statement that " federation and 
cooperation embody the dominant spirit of the age we are 
entering? " 

22. Why is only a giving church a growing church? Would the 
same principle apply to school work? 

23. What limitation does the Grange possess as a community cen- 
ter, which does not attach to the school or the library? 

24. What is meant (page 126) by the statement that the rural-life 
problem calls for a reconstruction and a reorganization of rural 
social institutions? 

25. How many of the community efforts enumerated on pages 126- 
127 take place in your rural community? Have you known 
communities where such took place? 

26. Why does the call for constructive rural service come to teach- 
ers with especial clearness and force? 

27. Would the " meaning of the country-life movement," as stated 
on page 128, form a good creed for country- workers? 



CHAPTER VI 

SOME WORTHY EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 

This chapter will be merely descriptive and illustra- 
tive, its purpose being to give concreteness to the pre- 
ceding chapters by describing some worthy efforts at 
rural service which have been carried out in different 
parts of the United States. Obviously no attempt can 
be made to describe here more than a very few typi- 
cal examples of conspicuous rural service, and it is not 
even claimed that the ones cited are the best of their 
kind. They are typical, however, and serve to illus- 
trate what was meant in the discussion of the preced- 
ing chapter. 

We shall classify these various efforts under the 
headings of (l) Church Organizations; (2) Young 
People's Organizations; (3) Library Organizations; 
(4) Farmers' Organizations; and (5) Agricultural Im- 
provement Organizations. These five represent the 
main forms of rural social service, though others, of 
more limited scope but of nevertheless worthy service, 
might be added if space would permit. It is hoped, 
however, that the few examples here described may 
serve to illustrate the possibilities and the form of such 
rural community service, and to show how centers for 
the rural community life may be created. 



132 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



I. CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS 

I, A rural church. One of the most notable ex- 
amples of rural-church community-service we have 
seen described in print ^ is one near Plainfield, in Du 
Page County, Illinois. Under the leadership of a 
young minister of insight and capacity, a poorly 
supported country church of the old type was, in 
ten years, transformed into a strong rural-community 

institution; a new com- 
munity-center type of 
church building erected; 
and the church was grad- 
ually transformed into 
a social center for the 
country people for miles 
around. 

The original church, 
established in 1833, was 
located in the country, six miles from a railroad, and 
in a rich farming area some thirty-five miles west of 
Chicago. The farms surrounding it were very rich, 
the farm homes of the best, and the country very 
prosperous. The church, however, had fallen into 
decay. The meeting-house, built fifty years before, 
was old, the fences had fallen down, and the horse- 
sheds were an eyesore. No one had united with the 
church for five years; there were few services; and a 

1 " Ten Years in a Country Church," by Matthew B. McNutt; 
in World's Work, December, 1910 (vol. xxi). 




Fig. 33. THE ORIGINAL CHURCH 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 133 

dancing club in the neighborhood attracted the young 
people much more. 

The new minister was fresh from a theological 
school, and had no training whatever for rural service. 
The people, too, were full of preconceived notions as 
to the church service and country life, which for a 
time prevented progress. The church awakened but 
little community interest; many had grown indifferent 
as to its services; others had grown indifferent as to its 
fate. It was soon evident that the only hope for prog- 
ress lay in working with the young; but how to interest 
them in the work of the church was not so easily seen. 

The first effort to interest the young people was by 
the organization of an old-fashioned singing-school, in 
which the young people were taught to read music and 
to sing. Quartets were formed, musical instruments 
were secured, and finally an orchestra was organized. 
Choruses were also formed, and special choral services 
rendered. This led to a great personal and home de- 
velopment of music in the community. Public speak- 
ing was also made a feature, and societies for debating 
and literary work were organized. Extemporaneous 
speaking on public questions soon became a feature, 
and debates with town teams were held. Plays were 
given at the church, and home-talent entertainments 
organized. These have proved very popular with the 
farmers and their families, and have done much to edu- 
cate the people away from the cheap amusements of 
the neighboring towns and cities. 



134 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Much was also made of athletics. A number of 
teams — baseball, basketball, tennis, etc. — were 
organized, and competitive matches arranged. Moot- 
courts, spelling-bees, story-telling clubs, reading- 
circles, and sewing-clubs were also formed. A printing- 
press was secured, and all of the church printing was 
soon done on it by the boys. Celebrations and public 
holidays were made patriotic and inspiring. The great- 
est day of the year is the "Annual Meeting" day, held 
each year on the third Saturday in March. This has 
been made into a great event. An all-day meeting is 
held; a banquet is served at noon; addresses are made; 
good music is rendered; letters from absent members 
are read, etc. The day is, in a way, a round-up of the 
year's work of the community. Sociability and fellow- 
ship are emphasized, and an effort is made to develop 
a new social feeling in the community. 

Such means as these were employed to awaken the 
community interest and to create a community feeling. 
To awaken the interest of both old and young and to 
develop a community life that should be strong and 
vigorous were the first essentials. These ends had to 
be accomplished through social efforts and service, 
instead of through religious services and zeal. A Bible 
class of young men was formed, with social meet- 
ings once a month, and Bible-study work on Sunday 
mornings. This class in time reached a membership 
of fifty rural young men, who not only held social 
meetings of much personal value and studied the 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 135 

Bible on Sundays, but in time became the pastor's 
chief assistants in rehgious and community service. A 
young women's sewing- and reading-circle rendered a 
somewhat analogous service. 

As a result of ten years of work along such lines, the 
rural community has been almost completely trans- 
formed. In the place of the old-type one-room church, 
a new institutional church has been erected. This 
contains an auditorium, with a seating capacity of five 
hundred ; a sepa- 
rate Sunday-school 
wing, containing a 
number of class- 
rooms; a pastor's 
study; a choir- "^ 

room; a mothers pj^ 34. the new institutional church 
room ; cloak-rooms ; 

and a vestibule, — all on the first floor. In the base- 
ment are a large dining-room, a kitchen, toilets, and 
a furnace-room. The building has its own lighting, 
heating, and water plants, and is well equipped with 
supplies and apparatus for entertainment and instruc- 
tion. The cost of the new institutional church was 
$10,000; all of this sum was subscribed before build- 
ing was begun; and the subscription lists included 
Catholics, German Lutherans, other Protestants, and 
men of no church, as well as members of the particular 
Protestant denomination. No collection for building 
or furnishings was needed at the time of its dedication. 




136 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The people, as a result of these many social efforts, 
have not grown less reverent or less religious. In ten 
years the church membership, which had previously 
been declining, increased from 80 to 163, and the Sun- 
day-school membership from 100 to 300. The manse 
connected with the church was also remodeled, to 
make it a more comfortable home for the pastor; the 
pastor's salary was very materially increased; and 
$5270 was contributed to benevolences of various 
kinds during the decade as against $6407 during the 
preceding fifty years. 

The effect on the people has been marked. Whole 
families, that formerly had no interest in the church 
or in the uplift of the community, have since become 
active church members. The community conception 
of life itself has materially widened. The people are 
buying books, pictures, and musical instruments; 
they are installing modern conveniences and comforts 
in their homes; they are friendlier, and more generous 
than before; a new desire for education has developed 
among the young; and a new community spirit and 
interest has been awakened. The people are orderly, 
peace-loving, and enterprising; and the young people 
clean, sturdy, and ambitious. Land values are rising, 
farms are in greatest demand, the farm-tenant tend- 
ency has been checked, and people who live outside 
this rural community now express the wish that they 
lived nearer to this church. In competition with 
social clubs, Grange, school, and town, this church, 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 137 

with a program of social betterment and service, has 
been successful in winning and holding the affections 
of these rural people. It has become distinctively the 
community center for both old and young in this 
rural agricultural community, and offers a worthy ex- 
ample of church effort for community betterment and 
community service. 

2. A village chujch. Another example of church 
service might be cited, this one from a community 
where all phases of the rural life were decadent.^ The 
church, agriculture, religion and morals, local govern- 
ment, the economic welfare, the physical man, the 
social and recreative life, and the community life it- 
self were all backward and stagnant. The pastor, 
having studied sociology as well as theology, sought 
out such a community, instead of its seeking him. His 
object in going to such a place had to be kept secret, 
as otherwise he would have met with opposition too 
strong to be overcome. His story is also the story of 
ten years of effort. 

He began to strengthen the church and the Sunday 
school by building up the social life of the community, 
which as a whole received much attention. The good 
economic, social, and religious results of good roads 
were pointed out. Better schools, township supervi- 
sion, and a township high school were also urged and 

1 "The Rural Pastor a Community Builder," by Charles O. 
Bernies, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at McClellandstown, 
Pennsylvania. In Rural Manhood, February, 1913 (vol. iv, no. 2). 



138 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

later secured, and still later an agricultural course was 
introduced into the high school. Scientific agriculture 
was continually preached in the pulpit and without, 
and, in order to demonstrate improved methods, the 
minister finally became advisory manager of a 330- 
acre farm in the community. This was organized into 
departments, and scientific methods were introduced 
and their advantages demonstrated. Some improve- 
ment in civic righteousness has also been made, though 
the presence of coal and coke towns in the township 
has made the progress in this particular less noticeable 
than in other directions. 

After much effort a new institutional church build- 
ing was also secured here. It has a basement, over 
fourteen feet high in the clear, divided into a large 
gymnasium, bath- and locker-rooms, dressing-rooms, 
and a kitchen. Here games, socials, festivals, and 
banquets are held. The main floor has a large audi- 
torium, with a platform with rooms on each side, and 
adaptable for use as a stage for amateur plays, enter- 
tainments, and concerts. The room is also used for 
meetings of the farmers' institutes, mining institutes, 
conferences for foreigners, Sunday-school conferences, 
high-school graduations, corn shows, and special oc- 
casion programs, as well as for the regular religious 
services. This building has done more than any one 
thing, except the work of the pastor himself, to make 
of this church an important community center, and 
during the ten years of social and religious effort more 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 139 

members have been added to the church than during 
the preceding sixty-three years of its history. It is 
another illustration of the statement that only a serv- 
ing church is a growing church. 

3. District nursing. Another form of church service, 
not included in either of the above, and yet one which 
might well be included in the work of an active living 
church, is the provision of a community nurse, and the 
enlistment of the community in an effort to improve 
sanitary conditions and to care better for the babies 
and the sick. A community nurse, acting in connec- 
tion with a community-center church, would be of 
much service in advancing the community welfare. 

II. ORGANIZATIONS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

Three organizations of this kind have recently begun 
active work, and each is worthy of mention. 

I. The Young Men's Christian Association, County- 
Work Division. This division was first founded in 1889, 
but it is only recently that any marked development of 
the work has been effected. Within the past five years 
a strong effort to extend the work has been made, with 
a view to organizing, ultimately, such counties as are 
rural and organizable in each of the states. The com- 
parative development of city and county work, dur- 
ing the past two years, is shown in the next diagram. 
This organization has in the past been essentially a 
city organization, but recognizing the fact that more 
than one half of the young men and boys in America 



140 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



TOTAL I^^CREASE 1910-1911 andlOll 1912 
No.of Association Points I 



■ 



lUrban 
i Bural 



ryyy^yyyxiryilMnUU 



No.of Members 
Bible Students 

Educational Stodenta 



1 11 


,1 


\\\ 


iu 


u,li 




TTT 


T 


n 


ffl 


U 








u\ 


tfl 


tttt 





2 4 6 ,8 101214101820 222-126 2830 32 34 30384042 44 4648 
PER GENT 



live in small towns and in rural districts, the Associa- 
tion has recently turned its attention to this field as 
well. Recognizing that, with the decline in influence 
of the church and the great change in rural-life con- 
ditions, the youth of such communities stand in par- 
ticular need of the character-building services of such 

an organization, 
this Association 
has begun the 
development of 
county work in 
an effort to im- 
prove rural and 
village manhood. 
Instead of the 
school district or 
the township, as is so common in school affairs, the 
county is made the unit of organization and adminis- 
tration. The county is subdivided, as may seem desir- 
able, and with rural communities as units. A county 
secretary is in charge of the work of each county, thus 
providing a trained specialist in all-round work for the 
young men and boys. 

Unlike the city organizations, little or no equip- 
ment is needed or desired. Membership is based upon 
what men give in service, rather than upon what they 
get in privileges. The chief work of the county secre- 
tary is the discovery, enlistment, training, and direc- 
tion of the volunteer leaders for the social, educational, 



Fio. 35. 



Y.M.C.A. — CITY AND RURAL 
DEVELOPMENT 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 141 

physical, and religious work of the Association. The 
work in the different counties naturally varies with 
the needs. In general, the organization work includes 
athletic meets, summer camps, recreative and com- 
petitive games, debates, educational tours, exhibits 
and contests, receptions, suppers, and social visita- 
tion, as well as Bible-study, the chief purpose of it all 
being to bring young men and boys of different com- 
munities together in such a way as to develop their 
character, increase their social power, and enlarge 
their mental horizon. This means not only physical 
exercise, but higher ideals for the development and 
care of the body. It also means mental growth, stimu- 
lated by club and group work; evening classes; plans 
for enriching rural life where it is poorest; ministering 
to the social hunger of the country boy with wholesome 
recreation and social contact; and religious work of a 
sensible and manly type. The Association also coop- 
erates with churches, Sunday schools, young-people's 
societies. Granges, fraternal organizations, and schools, 
with a view to making the work of all such organiza- 
tions more effective. Naturally the needs of boy life 
in rural districts and small towns receive the chief 
attention of the Association. 

Though naturally an ally of the church, and work- 
ing for the building-up of rural manhood and the moral 
life of rural communities, the movement itself is es- 
sentially a lay movement, financed by business men. 
Half of the members enrolled in its Bible-study classes 



142 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

are not church members, but one out of ten of such 
students is won each year to a Christian Hfe, and 
largely as the result of the personal touch of strong 
men. It is also non-denominational and inter-denomi- 
national, thus serving as an ally of all the churches, 
and bringing rival, competing, and jealous churches 
together for constructive work. The county secretary 
is usually a college graduate, with some special train- 
ing for the work, and one who knows the country, 
believes in the country, and has faith in the future of 
rural life. Up to the close of 1912, county work was in 
successful operation in 54 counties in 24 states, 80 
secretaries were giving their time to the work, 400 
local organizations within the counties were at work, 
1200 volunteer leaders were directing community 
activities, 25,000 young men and boys were enlisted 
in the work of the organization, and 800 business 
men were giving careful administrative oversight to 
the work of the county associations. The movement, 
as yet, is only in its beginnings, and in a short time is 
certain to exert a tremendous influence for good with 
the youth of rural and village communities. No other 
organization now gives promise of such large results 
in the elimination of vulgarity, profanity, licentious- 
ness and misdirected living, and in the conservation 
of rural manhood. 

2. The Young Women's Christian Association, 
County-Work Division. This is an even more recent 
development of this organization, and as yet has 



144 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

scarcely begun to serve. It is patterned after some- 
what the same lines as the Y.M.C.A. county work, 
and its aim is to do for the young women and girls in 
rural communities and villages a service similar to 
that so well begun for the young men and boys. This 
organization could add district nursing to its field of 
usefulness with advantage. 

3. Rural Boy-Scouts and Camp-Fire Girls. Provi- 
sion for *'the lone scout" is made in the Boy Scouts 
organization, and the idea is capable of development 
by teachers in rural schools, and others interested in 
rural welfare. A similar idea could be carried out by 
organizing rural girls, under the Camp-Fire Girls' 
plan of organization. Both of these organizations are 
so very recent, and have found such a field in the 
towns and smaller cities, that as yet they have had no 
opportunity to render any distinctively rural service. 

4. Boys' and girls' agricultural clubs. A number of 
boys* and girls' clubs, of different kinds, have been 
organized in the rural communities of different states, 
but the most common, as well as by far the most im- 
portant, are the Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs. 
There have been few developments within recent 
years of greater educational significance for rural-life 
improvement than these clubs. They have usually 
arisen as a result of some competitive contest, and 
clubs of various kinds have been formed, — clubs for 
corn-growing, cotton-growing, potato-growing, fruit- 
growing, live-stock study, bird-study, home culture. 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 145 

sewing-clubs, cooking-clubs, and camera-clubs are 
the main kinds which have been formed. Prizes have 
been offered for successful competition, schools, 
churches. Granges, commercial organizations, rural 
Y.M.C.A.'s, and citizens assisting and providing the 
funds. 

The good results of such club and competitive work 
are already apparent. The boys and girls have been 
trained to observe more closely; to recognize good and 
bad qualities in their products; they have met and 
learned to solve problems; they have learned some- 
thing as to the cost of production and the keeping of 
simple accounts; they have learned to read agricultural 
literature bearing on their work; and personal ini- 
tiative has been strongly developed. The importance 
of organized effort, cooperation, and compromise — 
matters of much importance in rural districts — 
have been developed. The influence on the parents, 
the homes, and on agriculture on the home farms 
has been most excellent. Agricultural and home- 
making literature has been popularized; new facts 
and processes have been introduced; and parents and 
children have found growing contests and farmers' in- 
stitutes interesting and profitable. In some of the 
more important agricultural states, both in the North 
and in the South, the prizes offered for successful 
competition have included^ trips to the state agricul- 
tural college, and a short course of instruction there. 

The schools have found these clubs of great value, 



146 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

not only in developing agricultural and domestic- 
science instruction, but in awakening both school 
and community interest as well. The exhibits have 
often proved among the most attractive of all exhibits 
at the local and state fairs, and have done much to 
make the people feel that the schools are rendering a 
useful service. 

III. THE RURAL LIBRARY 

Another great service for rural and village life, which 
has been begun almost entirely within the past twenty 
years, and largely within the past five or six years, is 
the introduction of the traveling and branch libraries 
for the benefit of rural and village people. This move- 
ment has developed so rapidly within the past five 
years that, in the near future, we may expect to see 
library facilities carried to every rural home. The 
city library, with its branch libraries and stations, has 
for some time carried library facilities to all of the 
people of the city. It is now proposed to render the 
same service to rural and village communities, using 
the county (or township) as a unit, and with branches 
and sub-stations in the village schoolhouses and farm 
homes. 

The movement may be said to have begun with the 
appropriation made by the New York Legislature, in 
1892, under which the New York State Library began 
to send out traveling libraries to organizations or as- 
sociations of citizens in the villages and rural districts. 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 147 



of the state. A box of fifty to sixty books was sent, 
and this could be retained for six months. This plan 
was gradually followed by other states, and at the end 
of fifteen years (1907) twenty-two states had adopted 
the idea, and had a total of over five thousand boxes 
in circulation. After about 1905, and especially since 
1909, state after 
state has adopted 
the library-exten- 
sion idea, and in a 
few years it may 
be expected that 
every state in the 
Union will have 
made some pro- 
vision for carrying 
library facilities to 
the people of the 
rural districts. In- 
stead of waiting 
for the people to 

apply for the libraries, state organizers have been sent 
among the people to explain to them the advantages, 
select deposit stations, and help them arrange for the 
first box of books. The expenses of transportation 
have usually been paid by the state, from legislative 
appropriations for the purpose. 

The state traveling library, however, may be re- 
garded as only a beginning, and as an initiatory step 




Fig. 37. A TRAVELING LIBRARY IN A 

FARMHOUSE 



148 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

leading to the establishment of county (or town- 
ship) libraries. The county is the natural unit, with 
township libraries as branches. The state then deals 
only with the county libraries. These then establish 
branches throughout the county, as needed, using 
schools, stores, post-oJ0Sces, and homes as branches and 
depositories. The existing libraries, including school 
libraries, are frequently incorporated into the county 
library plan, and the books are indexed and catalogued 
according to a uniform county system. Every one in the 
county, including children, may then become borrow- 
ers from the county or a branch library, and boxes of 
books, or single books to meet individual needs, are 
sent out as called for. Pictures are included by some 
states, while a few, notably New York, supply sets of 
lantern slides for lectures. The ultimate end in view 
is that any citizen of the state may be able to borrow 
books to meet his needs. The establishment of a low 
rate for books sent by parcels post would greatly aid 
the movement. 

The plate opposite shows how the librarian of Wash- 
ington County, Maryland, not content to wait for the 
people to come after the books, has taken the books 
and gone to the people. This library was one of the 
first in the United States to begin extension work within 
the county, having opened twenty -three branches in 
1901. By 1903 there were fifty-five branches and two 
village libraries in cooperation. In 1905 a horse and 
wagon were purchased, in order to reach the homes. 




AN AUTOMOBILE THAT HAS TAUGHT A COUNTY TO READ 

In the first six months of 1912, this motor truck circulated 23,000 books 
in Washington County, Maryland, of which more than two thousand were 
delivered to the homes of remote families in the rural districts. 




ONE OF THE LOCAL MEETINGS FOR COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT 
This is one of the local community meetings described on page 158. 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 149 

and when this proved too slow it was discarded for the 
automobile shown in the picture. 

IV. farmers' organizations 

I. The Grange. The largest and most important of 
the distinctively farmers' organizations is the Grange, 
the official title of which is the Patrons of Husbandry. 
The members are called Patrons; the local organiza- 
tions, Granges. This association dates back to 1849, 
it having been founded in that year by a Minnesota 
farmer by the name of Kelley,for the purpose of better 
educating farmers for their business, and for cultivat- 
ing a better spirit of brotherhood between the North 
and the South. The movement grew, and, by 1873, 
when the National Grange was organized, there were 
20,000 Granges, in 28 states, with a membership of 
three quarters of a million persons. Many at first 
entered the organization for financial gain alone. A 
kindred organization was established for political 
agitation, but this soon died, and in its downfall seri- 
ously injured the Grange. During the decade of agri- 
cultural depression, following 1880, the Granges de- 
clined greatly in membership and influence, but, with 
the coming of the fourth-period conditions in our 
agricultural development, the Grange has rapidly 
increased in both particulars. 

Local lodges, or Granges, exist in the agricultural 
townships, or communities. The area of local jurisdic- 
tion is about five or six miles in diameter, and usually 



150 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

corresponds closely with that of a rural community. 
The membership consists of both men and women. In 
addition, every boy and girl over fifteen years of age 
may attain full membership, while those over fourteen 
may be admitted by vote. Only those whose interests 
are with agriculture are eligible, though rural ministers 
and teachers are here included. Women are placed on 
a plane of equality with the men, and every delegate to 
the State Grange is a double delegate — man and wife. 
Women are eligible to any office in the order, and some 
of the most effective state workers have been women. 
Members must also be persons of good repute. An ed- 
ucational program is a part of each regular meeting of 
the Grange. Many Granges have built their own halls, 
which are equipped with dining-room and kitchen, as 
well as lecture- or assembly-hall. 

This organization has accomplished much for the 
improvement of agricultural conditions and the life 
of rural people. The legislation it has won has been 
important. In national legislation, the creation of the 
Department of Agriculture, the establishment of the 
Interstate Commerce Commission, larger national 
grants for the agricultural colleges, the establishment 
of rural free mail delivery, laws preventing the exten- 
sion of patents on sewing-machines, and pure-food 
laws are among the chief measures to its credit. In 
the different states it has also been influential. Even 
more important than these measures has been the 
local influence of the order. As an organization it has 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 151 

done more than any other agency to drive isolation 
out of the farming communities, to extend social op- 
portunities, and to further fellowship and cooperation 
among farmers and their wives. It has stood for intel- 
ligent and intensive farming, cooperative purchasing 
and selling, mutual insurance, and the amelioration of 
influences injurious to the farm and farm life. It has 
given a great impetus to agricultural education and 
to the study of domestic science, has stood for better 
schools, and has done much to assist the movement 
for the consolidation of schools. It has also empha- 
sized the need for scientific knowledge, now being so 
well met by the farmers' institutes. The Grange hall 
has been made an educational center, and its debat- 
ing clubs, lecture courses, exhibitions, and circulating 
libraries have done much to educate the farmer. 

The work of the organization in improving the ethi- 
cal life of rural communities has been one of its marked 
features. While avoiding all sectarian discussions, it 
has emphasized real religion and a moral and religious 
life. Being distinctively a family organization, its in- 
fluence in improving and conserving the home has been 
very large. The church has not been more influential 
or helpful in conserving family life, and, with the de- 
cline in influence of the rural church, the Grange has 
in many places practically taken its place as the con- 
server and improver of the moral life of the community. 

The Grange is an important rural institution, and 
has within itself the possibility of great rural service. 



152 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Organization, cooperation, and education are the basic 
principles of the order. It includes the entire family, 
and its chief work is moral and educational. With the 
school and the church, the Grange seems destined to 
be one of the great forces for the moulding and improv- 
ing of rural life. By avoiding sectarian and political 
questions, which might destroy its usefulness, it is able 
to concentrate the energies of its members on rural 
welfare. It is an organization with which teachers and 
school officers should connect themselves, and with 
which they should work heartily. 

2. The Hesperia Movement. This is described here 
as one of the best of a type of community improve- 
ment clubs, of which many have been formed in differ- 
ent parts of the United States. Hesperia is a little 
agricultural community of about seven hundred peo- 
ple, the center of which is twelve miles from a railroad. 
It is located in Oceana County, Michigan, about forty 
miles north and west of Grand Rapids. The region 
consists of fertile farms, and a good class of the home- 
builder type of farmer. They are noted as progressive, 
successful, and intelligent. Being somewhat isolated, 
they started to develop their own local community in- 
stitutions for local improvement. 

The movement started there by a transformation of 
the teachers' institute into a cooperative organization 
of teachers and farmers. Starting at first with neigh- 
borhood meetings and local speakers, it soon devel- 
oped into a cooperative association of farmers, home- 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 153 

makers, teachers, and pupils, all working for the im- 
provement of the local schools and the advancement 
of the community welfare. To give wholesome enter- 
tainments for rural people, to create a taste for good 
books, to develop higher ideals of citizenship, and to 
improve the rural-school surroundings were also fea- 
tures of the work. Acting on the principle that the real 
forces which socialize rural life must spring from 
within the community itself rather than from without, 
these people have succeeded in developing a move- 
ment which has become known all over the United 
States. Its purpose is not to supplant other organiza- 
tions, but rather to draw all together in closer union 
and sympathy. The '* big meeting," held at Hes- 
peria once each year, is a great event, and to this some 
of the best speakers in the United States have been 
drawn to speak to the people on topics relating to the 
school, the church, the farm, the home, and civic life. 
On Sunday, a union service emphasizes the place of 
the church as a spiritual factor in rural life. The re- 
sulting benefits to this small rural community have 
been large, and the lives of the people have been made 
happier, more influential, and more hopeful, and the 
intellectual, moral, and social tone of the community 
has been greatly improved. The movement has been 
copied in other parts of Michigan, and in a few neigh- 
boring states, while " improvement clubs *' and similar 
" federations," having a similar purpose, have sprung 
up in a number of states. 



154 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

V. ORGANIZATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL 
IMPROVEMENT 

I. The farmers' institute. This is indirectly a prod- 
uct of the work of the Grange. As the farmers of the 
different communities met together to discuss affairs 
relating to their life and work, it became usual for 
them to send to the state agricultural college for men 
to come and speak to them on various agricultural and 
social topics. So useful were such services found, and 
so frequent did the calls become, that the state colleges 
organized bureaus for supplying speakers and manag- 
ing the meetings, or institutes, as they soon came to be 
called. As an outcome of this activity, the state legis- 
latures began to make specific appropriations to the 
agricultural colleges to enable them to secure addi- 
tional instructors and to organize and manage the 
work properly. The farmers' institute has now become 
a regular feature of the work of our agricultural colleges, 
and nearly every state in the Union now provides for 
such instruction. In reality it is nothing more nor less 
than a university-extension movement in agriculture, 
originating with the farmers themselves. 

These institutes have now developed into real short- 
course schools for the instruction of the farmers. Lec- 
tures and demonstrations continue often for a week, 
the superintendent of farmers' institutes from the 
agricultural college and his assistants going to the in- 
stitute and remaining there for the whole time. Re- 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 155 

cently sanitation, domestic science, home economics, 
and social welfare have been added to the former in- 
struction in agriculture and business management, 
and the women have come to find the institute as 
valuable as do the men. An effort has also been made 
to bring together in these institutes all of the various 
forces now working for the betterment of rural life. 
Farmers' clubs, the Grange, the church, the library, 
and the school are now frequently asked to cooperate 
in the county and state institutes, and in a few of the 
recent meetings the theme for the session was how 
better to unify the different forces working for the 
amelioration of rural life. The value of these farmers' 
institutes in advancing agriculture and in improving 
the life and social welfare of the farmer and his family 
is not likely to be overestimated. 

The good effects of this work with the farmers has 
become so evident that a few of our agricultural col- 
leges are now organizing institutes and short courses 
for rural ministers, with a view to acquainting the 
ministers with agricultural practices, advances, and 
needs, and interesting them in the upbuilding of rural 
communities by means of intelligent rural service. 

2. The county farm expert. This is a recent develop- 
ment of the work of the United States Department 
of Agriculture, working in connection with the state 
agricultural colleges and city or county boards of 
trade or commercial clubs. Thirty such cooperative 
undertakings in a dozen different states had been 



156 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

established by the close of 1912, while twenty more 
such were in process of organization. As fast as Con- 
gress appropriates funds for the purpose, it is the in- 
tention of the Department to effect organizations in 
other counties, with a view to covering, ultimately, 
the entire United States. Of the expenses for salary, 
travel, and office, the United States Department of 
Agriculture pays from one fourth to one third, the 
state or county often a portion, and commercial organ- 
izations or individuals the remainder. The possibili- 
ties for educational and social usefulness of the plan 
may be shown by describing one such undertaking, as 
put into effect by the Clinton City Commercial Club. 
This was the first county in Iowa to employ an 
agricultural expert. The effort began in the Commer- 
cial Club, and a director of the club was placed in 
charge of an effort to bring the farmers and the city 
into closer cooperation. Out of this beginning a unique 
plan was evolved, whereby representative farmers 
from all parts of the county, as is shown in the 
diagram opposite, were brought into communication 
and into membership in the club. A committee on 
agriculture of the club was next constituted, to con- 
sist of one third city members and two thirds farm- 
ers, and local township organizations were provided 
for in each of the twenty townships of the county. 
The membership of these township organizations was 
to include every farmer in the township who would pay 
the small yearly dues, and the directors of these were 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 157 




THE CLINTON PLAN 
rOK AGRlCULIUKAt BETTERMENT 



COMBINING CITY AND 
COUNTRY A3 A SINGLE UNIT 



Fio. 38. 



THE CLINTON PLAN FOR AGRICULTURAL BETTERMENT 

Combining city and country as a single unit. 



given membership in the city club. Each township 
was further divided into a number of neighborhood 
clubs, of twelve families each, with provision for a 
meeting of each club once a month, at the home of one 
of the members. 

Each township agreed to contribute at least $100 
a year from its dues to the work, and for each $10 in 
dues one farmer was given membership in the Clinton 
Commercial Club. The United States Department of 
Agriculture added $1200 a year, and the Crop Im- 
provement Committee of the Council of Grain Ex- 
changes, in Chicago, added $1000 a year. The club 
stood sponsor for the success of the idea, and made a 
three-year contract with an agricultural adviser, ob- 
tained from the state agricultural college. His duties, 
as outlined in his contract, were to direct demonstra- 



158 EURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tion and experimental work within the county; to 
ascertain the varieties of grains best adapted to Clin- 
ton County conditions; to direct the selection and dis- 
tribution of seeds; to assist the County Superintendent 
of Schools in the introduction of agriculture into the 
schools; to organize and help conduct short-course 
schools, for Clinton County farmers and their families, 
in stock- and grain- judging, and in domestic science; 
to assist in the organization of cooperative clubs, 
Granges, lecture and demonstration courses, etc.; to 
visit farmers, and advise with them as to the care and 
improvement of their farms, stock, and homes; to 
organize and direct the dairy tests; to establish regular 
office hours, when he might be consulted, either in 
person or by telephone; and to cooperate with the 
schools, farmers' institutes, county-fair associations, 
rural churches, and other organizations, with a view 
to promoting the agricultural, social, educational, and 
religious interests of Clinton County. He became, in 
reality, a local agricultural expert, serving the people 
on call and without fees. 

The meetings of the neighborhood clubs are im- 
portant features of the Clinton plan. Consisting of 
twelve families, one meeting a year is held at each 
home. During the forenoon, the men and older boys 
look over the farm and farm-buildings, and discuss 
the methods employed and the results obtained. 
While the men and boys are so engaged, the women 
and girls are looking over the house and garden, and 



SOME EXAMPLES OF RURAL SERVICE 159 

discussing domestic problems. At noon a picnic din- 
ner is served, each family bringing a basket. After 
this a short program of some kind is given, in which the 
children frequently take part. At each meeting some 
particular subject — such as roads, social life, educa- 
tional conditions and needs, improved kitchens, etc. — 
is made the special topic for the afternoon. Sometimes 
round-table meetings are held on the topics, some- 
times there is a debate, and sometimes outsiders are 
invited in to talk on the subject for the day, or to 
demonstrate a new method of doing some particular 
thing. After the formal dinner-table program is com- 
pleted, the young people play games, while the older 
ones visit together. 

The value of such organizations in breaking up the 
old rural isolation, in promoting neighborhood ac- 
quaintance and solidarity, and in disseminating agri- 
cultural and educational ideas will undoubtedly be 
very large, while the monetary value to the farmers 
of having a disinterested county agricultural adviser, 
ready to visit them and to prescribe, is likely to be 
under- rather than overestimated. Another value of 
great social as well as business significance is the unit- 
ing of the city and the country in constructive work. 
Such cooperative efforts as this will contribute much 
toward promoting community and county solidarity, 
and in improving the conditions surrounding rural 
life. 



PART II 
THE RUBAL-SCHOOL PROBLEM 



CHAPTER VII 

FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS IN RURAL EDUCATION 

The school and democracy. The provision of free 
elementary education for all of our people has long 
been a noteworthy feature of our American life. As 
rapidly as new agricultural areas have been opened to 
settlement, the little district school has been created 
and has opened its doors to the children of the new 
settlers. Here fundamentals of English learning have 
been taught to all who came. Within recent years the 
struggle to eliminate illiteracy in our country, by insist- 
ing on the fundamentals of learning for all, has been 
marked in both the Northern and Southern States. 
The little country schoolhouse at the crossroads or 
by the wayside, with its handful of pupils and its 
American flag, has become a marked feature of our 
landscape. The estabhshment of such schools has 
no doubt contributed much to the creation and pre- 
servation of a democratic spirit among us, and their 
establishment has also done much to weld the differ- 
ent elements in our population into a homogeneous 
whole. The creation of new schools has been made 
easy of accomplishment under the laws, and schools 
have been multiplied in such numbers as to bring a 
school near to the home of every child. 



164 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



Until very recently about the only progress made in 
rural education was in the multiplication of schools 
and schoolhouses. While the cities were expending 
much thought on their school systems, and were in- 
creasing the efficiency of them by adjusting them to 
the new and more complex life conditions which they 
faced, the rural school, as an institution, not only 





:'^^'"'^3^'iHM«^^ 

Fig. 39. THE SCHOOL BY THE WAYSmE 



stood still, but in many cases actually slid backward. 
There can be little doubt but that the average rural 
school gradually declined in efficiency, and came to 
render a much less useful community service than did 
the earlier type of country school. 

The decline of the district school. The changes 
which have marked the third and fourth periods in our 
agricultural development have brought forcibly to the 
front the need of a fundamental change in the nature 
and purpose of our rural education. In many country 



FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS 



165 



schools the number of pupils has greatly declined 
within the past quarter of a century. Other schools 
have been entirely closed. Some districts have been 
depleted by the removal of farmers to the cities or 
to other farming 
regions, and, due 
to an introduc- 
tion of machinery, 
the elimination of 
small farms, or 
to new farming 
conditions; while 
other districts, 
where no such 
changes have tak- 
en place, have 
suffered a loss by 
reason of the grow- 
ing-up of the chil- 
dren and by the 
decreasing size of 
families in the district. In still other districts the 
school has been depleted because many of the farmers 
now send their children to town, to obtain better edu- 
cational advantages for them. The elimination of the 
small children at the bottom and the older ones at 
the top, due to grading and the development of high 
schools, has also served to deplete still further the rural 
school. 




Fig. 40. A ONE-PUPIL CLASS 
Many Buch exist in every county. 



166 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The result of recent changes. As a result of these 
changes it has come about that there is an increasing 
number of rural schools which have so few pupils and 
so many classes that there is little chance for mind to 
wrestle with mind. Such schools lack interest, enthu- 
siasm, and impulses to action, and usually have poor 
attendance and a short term. For such schools the 
financial support is usually small and the moral sup- 
port weak. The frequent changes in teachers; the 
inadequate supervision; the lack of proper direction; 
and the poor, inadequate, and too often run-down 
school building, make the school almost wholly lacking 
in the elements which are necessary to make it an im- 
portant factor in the lives of country children. Com- 
pared with a good town school, the little rural school is 
often miserably poor, and the mere handful of pupils, 
the overburdened program, and the lack of ideas or 
impulses to effective action on the part of either teacher 
or school authorities create heavy odds against a life 
in the open country. While better off in many respects, 
the small village school often suffers from many of 
these same influences. 

Rural school still of large importance. Yet about 
one haK of the school children of the United States are 
enrolled in the rural schools,^ and perhaps ninety per cent 
of the children of the rural population receive no other 
education. That the education provided for such chil- 

' If small town schools are added, about three fifths are enrolled 
in non-urban schools. 



FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS 



167 



dren is what it ought to be, or might easily be made to 
be, few will maintain. Rural children are entitled to 
something better, and the interests of the state de- 
mand that there be a better equalization of the oppor- 
tunities and advantages of education, as between the 
city boy or girl on the one hand and the boy and girl 
in the small villages and the rural districts on the 
other. 

Poor rural schools not necessary. That it is possi- 
ble to provide, in most cases, as good an education 
for rural as for . — 



city children, and 
that this ought to 
be done in the 
interests of rural 
and national effi- 
ciency, we believe 
will be evident to 
any one who will 
carefully study the question. The chief reason why this 
has not been done before now, and the chief difficulty 
encountered in trying to provide such advantages to- 
day, is the conservatism and low educational ideals of 
the people in the rural communities themselves. Too 
many farmers have no proper conception as to the pos- 
sibilities of education, or what is possible for country 
children. Lacking this, they naturally fail to see the 
necessity of new forms of organization, or of increased 
expenditures for teachers, equipment, or supervision. 







Fig. 41. 



A TYPICAL RUN-DOWN SCHOOL- 
HOUSE 



168 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

This lack is due largely to the fact that they are them- 
selves products of the present system, — a system 
which has been hallowed by age and endeared by 
sentiment, and this age and sentiment blind them to 
the greater possibilities which are easily within their 
reach. Tremendously impressed with the results ac- 
complished in the past under the old system, the short- 
comings of the present schools have not been seen. The 
comparative isolation of the rural home and of the 
rural school renders both somewhat immune from the 
criticism and the contagion for improvement which 
continually stir the city and compel progressive action 
there. 

The recent criticism from without. The past twenty- 
five years have been a period of criticism and recon- 
struction in public education, and within the past 
decade the rural school has come in for its share of dis- 
cussion and criticism. Unlike the schools of the city, 
the criticism has come largely from without, instead 
of from within. During the past ten years probably 
no part of our public-school system has come in for 
more thought and attention than have our rural 
schools, yet no part, generally speaking, has shown so 
little improvement. Hundreds of articles have been 
written on the subject, hundreds of addresses have 
been made, and numbers of carefully prepared reports 
have been submitted. Legislators, citizens, teachers. 
Grangers, — all have considered the problem and 
have offered suggestions for improvement. Despite 



FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS 169 

many recent advances, and despite a number of ex- 
amples of reorganized and redirected rural schools, the 
problem, generally speaking, remains largely with us, 
and is as yet largely unsolved. Only a small percent- 
age of our rural people have as yet grasped the signifi- 
cance for rural life and education of the changes which 
have been proposed. 

The recent rural-life movement. Within very recent 
years, one might say in the past five or six, a very sig- 
nificant movement for the conservation and improve- 
ment of all rural life and institutions has sprung up in 
this country. This has for its purpose nothing less 
than that of so reshaping and so redirecting the insti- 
tutions of rural society that rural civilization will be- 
come as effective and satisfying for country people as 
that of the town and city now is for city people. The 
appointment, by President Roosevelt in 1908, of a Na- 
tional Commission on Country Life was a formal recog- 
nition of the movement, and the report of this com- 
mission, in 1909, stated the needs and deficiencies of 
the rural life of to-day, and pointed out possible reme- 
dies and lines for future action. The movement is not 
a ** back-to-the-land movement," in the newspaper 
sense of the term, which is a doubtful propaganda, 
but rather a movement to even up educational advan- 
tages, institutional life, and social opportunities as be- 
tween the country and the city. Its immediate im- 
pulse has been a desire to improve farming and to 
make it a more satisfying life career, but this also in- 



170 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

volves an improvement of rural social institutions, 
chief among which are the church, the school, the 
home, and rural social life. For the next quarter of a 
century, at least, we shall in all probability witness 
a further marked development and expansion of this 
rural-life movement. It will be economic, social, reli- 
gious, educational, and, in all probability, political as 
well. The beginnings of the movement go back some 
distance, but it is only recently that the movement 
has begun to express itself with sufficient clearness to 
attract general attention. 

The expression of this new country-life movement 
with which we are here most interested is that phase 
of it which aims to reshape and redirect the rural 
school, and it is this phase of the movement which we 
shall consider in the succeeding pages of this book. 

Away-from-the-farm influence of the rural school. 
The fundamental needs of the rural and small village 
schools of to-day are that they be redirected and revi- 
talized. Since the change in direction of the rural and 
village school in the late seventies and early eighties, 
as described in chapter iv, these schools have departed 
further and further from the old rural type, and the 
away-from-the-farm influence in rural education has 
been marked. The uniform textbooks, which have 
been introduced by law, were books written primarily 
for the city child; the graded course of study, which 
was superimposed from above, was a city course of 
study; the ideals of the school became, in large part. 



FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS 



171 



city and professional in type; and the city-educated 
and city-trained teachers have talked of the city, over- 
emphasized the affairs of the city, and sighed to get 
back to the city to teach. The subjects of instruction 




Fig. 42. A TYPICAL RURAL SCHOOL OF THE BETTER CLASS 

This is a good example of from one third to one half of the 212,000 rural schools 
of the United States. 

have been formal and traditional, and the course of 
instruction has been designed more to prepare for en- 
trance to a city or town high school than for life in the 
open country. So far as the school has been vocational 
in spirit, it has been the city vocations and professions 
for which it has tended to prepare its pupils, and not 
the vocations of the farm and the home. The natural 
result of this change in direction has been that the 
rural school has lost its former vitality, and country 



172 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

people have so thoroughly lost interest in it that it is 
now usually difficult to interest them in the shortcom- 
ings of their school or to secure their cooperation for 
its improvement. 

Need of redirecting the school. The expression of 
this new country-life movement, as it relates to edu- 
cation, is in the form of a proposal to redirect and 
revitalize the rural and village schools; to relate them 
directly to their environment; and to interest rural 
people again in their schools by creating schools which 
will make a direct appeal to them. It is also proposed 
to create a new type of school to meet modern educa- 
tional needs. The present marked interest in agricul- 
tural education and in the general improvement of 
rural life offers to the school an opportunity to begin 
a reorganization which will change the direction of its 
efforts, and give to it new vitality as a rural institution. 
The accomplishment of such a result will reestablish 
the school as an important rural social institution, and 
will be of much more importance than the mere intro- 
duction of agriculture as a new subject of study. 

Difficulties to be encountered. The problem of how 
to redirect the rural schools and make them ejBficient 
rural social institutions is not a simple one, and the 
diflSculties in the way of such an accomplishment must 
not be underestimated. The decreasing attendance 
at the rural schools; the increasing farm tenantry; 
the peculiar attitude of mind of the farming popula- 
tion, due to the lack of social contact and cooperation; 



FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS 17S 

the inadequate school equipment; the poorly trained 
teachers, and the temporary nature of the employ- 
ment; the low salaries, and the meager financial sup- 
port; the small and irregular attendance, and the short 
term; the almost total absence of supervision of a con- 
structive and helpful type; and the lack of a unity 
of effort and of a definite program for helpful service; 
— these are the chief difficulties which beset the path 
of those who would improve and transform the rural 
schools of our land. The mere enumeration of the prin- 
cipal difficulties to be encountered makes the problem 
of redirection seem formidable enough. 

The great rural-life interests. Yet these difficulties 
are not insurmountable, though time, more money, 
and some changes in organization will be required. As 
the school begins to redirect its efforts so as to empha- 
size in its instruction the vital home and community 
interests of the region, and to give expression in its 
work to the interests and common experiences of the 
community in which it is located, these difficulties will 
begin to fade away. The redirection of rural educa- 
tion means that the school is to abandon its city ideals 
and standards, except as these are adaptable to rural 
as well as to city schools, and to develop its instruc- 
tion with reference to its environment and the local 
interests and needs. The main effort of its instruction 
should be to put its pupils into sympathetic touch 
with the rural life about them, in which the great ma- 
jority of them ought to find their future homes. Just 



174 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

as the better city schools definitely recognize and em- 
phasize in their instruction the needs and the voca- 
tions incident to city life, so our rural schools should 
be so redirected as to emphasize in their instruction 
the vocations of the home and the farm, for which the 
great majority of their pupils are destined. In the open 
country the soil and the home will ever remain the 
great prime interests, and the instruction provided, 
while including whatever of city instruction is adapted 
to country needs, should nevertheless keep these prime 
rural interests clearly in the foreground. 

Legitimate functions of the redirected schooL 
Merely to educate the young ought to be but a part of 
the mission of the school. This is important, of course, 
and it should be done much better than it is now done. 
The school, though, ought to reach out into the com- 
munity life and influence it positively for good. The 
great and fundamental interests of the home and the 
vocation should be touched and quickened by it. A 
new sense of responsibility on the part of rural people 
for agricultural improvement and for the conservation 
of the soil should be awakened. The village, which is 
the center for an agricultural community, also should 
be awakened to a sense of its relationship to the prob- 
lem of rural welfare. The conservation of soil fertility; 
the improvement of farming methods; the preserva- 
tion of the natural scenery of the community; the 
dissemination of agricultural and general knowledge; 
the preparation for the intelligent use of leisure time; 



FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS 175 

the improvement of home life; the conservation of 
child-hfe, girlhood, and motherhood; the stimulating 
of social organizations to useful activity; and, in gen- 
eral, the development of a better rural society; — all 
of these are as much legitimate functions of the re- 
directed school as is the teaching to read and write 
and cipher. When teachers and school officials come to 
see this as so, then will the school be on the way to 
becoming a useful center for the community life. 

A group of problems involved. To accomplish such 
a fundamental change in an old established institu- 
tion, controlled as it now is by the rural people them- 
selves, is by no means a simple or an easy task, and 
naturally cannot be accomplished in a day or a year. 
To reach the average farmer and to secure his active 
cooperation for the improvement of the rural school, 
especially if it is going to cost materially more, is a 
proverbially difficult undertaking. The problem, too, 
is not a single one, but is in reality composed of a num- 
ber of related problems in educational organization and 
administration which will have to be met and solved. 
These relate to: (1) the plans of organization; (2) the 
system of maintenance; (3) the teaching equipment; 
(4) the instruction imparted; (5) the training and work 
of the teacher; (6) possible reorganizations; (7) the 
supervision of instruction; and (8) the extension of edu- 
cational advantages and opportunities. These separate 
problems it will now be our purpose to consider, in 
order. 



176 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Explain how it is that the average rural school, while perhaps 
a better school than it was fifty years ago, is still less efficient 
than it was then. 

2. Enumerate the different influences which have contributed 
to the depletion of the district school. 

3. How many of these influences have been in operation in your 
community during recent years.? 

4. How many small schools exist in your state .f* In your county.? 

5. Excluding town schools, what is the average enrollment and at- 
tendance in the schools of your county? 

6. What is the average recitation period (a) in such schools.? (6) 
In the same grade in town or city schools.? 

7. Compare the city and the country in the matter of constructive 
criticism of their own institutions and life. 

8. Why have the criticism and constructive proposals for rural 
education, which have characterized the past decade, come 
almost entirely from other sources than the country people 
themselves? 

9. Distinguish between the " back-to-the-land movement" and the 
rural-life movement. Why is the former a doubtful propaganda? 

10. Explain how the rural school has prepared for the city vocations, 
rather than for rural life. 

11. What is meant by the statement that the rural school should 
"develop its instruction with reference to its local environment 
and needs" ? 

12. Is the statement, "As the home is the center of civilization, so 
the home subjects should be the center of every school," good 
educational doctrine? Why? 

13. How can we adapt instruction in the old fundamental subjects 
to " the needs of the soil and the home"? 

14. Explain, as well as can be done at this point in the discussion, 
what is meant by saying that "the school must be funda- 
mentally redirected." 

15. Discuss possible ways in which the legitimate functions of the 
redirected school, as enumerated on pages 174-175, might be 
undertaken. 



CHAPTER VIII 
ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 

As some understanding of the different type plans 
for organization and maintenance, as found in the dif- 
ferent American states, is essential for a proper grasp 
of the rural-school problem of to-day, we shall devote 
the present chapter to a brief consideration of these 
different type plans, in so far as they relate to the man- 
agement and support of the rural and small village 
schools of our land. 

Early schools community undertakings. Schools 
and the means of education, with us, arose as distinctly 
community undertakings, and not as state systems 
of education. With us, historically, the development 
has been from the community outward, and the organi- 
zation of county and state school systems has come 
by a gradual grouping together of these community ef- 
forts. While a few of the early colonies, notably Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut, early ordered the mainte- 
nance of a school by the towns, in most of the other states 
schools preceded laws, and the early legislation merely 
authorized and permitted, as public undertakings, 
what had already begun as private affairs. The first 
schools, generally, knew no higher authority than the 
will of the people creating them. Even after general 
legislation had begun to express the state feeling of a 



178 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

need for education, the laws for a long time related 
almost entirely to permission to tax, the building of 
schoolhouses, the length of the term, and the rights of 
the community in guiding and directing the school. 
Such supervision as was given was that directed by 
local needs and local opinion, rather than by the needs 
of any larger whole. 

School systems a product of evolution. As the 
several states have gradually formulated their school 
laws and organized their school systems, they have 
in nearly all cases at first merely gathered up into a 
state school system the local organizations existing at 
the time. It has naturally followed that marked differ- 
ences obtain in methods of organization, support, and 
administration, as between the different states, and 
that the educational conditions existing to-day in any 
one state, as a result of this long popular evolution, 
may not be those which are most desirable from the 
point of view of present-day educational ideas and 
ideals as to organization and administration. In some 
cases, though, the existing organization is capable of 
being adapted to meet the new needs; in others, no 
substantial progress is possible without some funda- 
mental change. 

I. TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 

1. The District System 
The most common and, as it is often stated, the most 
democratic type of school organization and adminis- 



180 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tration which we have in the United States to-day is 
what is known as the district system. The extent of its 
use is shown by the map on the preceding page. The 
system of district control originated in Massachusetts 
in response to a local need, and was carried rapidly 
to the westward by New England settlers. In its essen- 
tial features the district system of school organization 
has changed but little since its first establishment, 
though the different states have since found it neces- 
sary, due to changing economic and educational con- 
ditions, greatly to curtail its power and its privileges, 
and in some cases to abandon its use altogether. 

Its essential features. Wherever half a dozen fami- 
lies lived near enough together to make organization 
possible, they were permitted to meet together and to 
form a school district. They then elected a board of 
school directors or school trustees to represent them, 
voted to erect a schoolhouse, to employ a teacher, and 
to levy a school tax on the property of the people within 
the district. The districts, as organized, varied in shape 
as the necessities required, and in size from two or three 
to twelve, fifteen, or more square miles in area. The 
process of district formation, subdivision of districts, 
and alteration of district boundaries was all made easy 
of accomplishment under the early laws, and, as new 
families moved into the districts, the process of mul- 
tiplication and division of districts went on until a 
little district school was finally found within walking 
distance of the children of every farm home. As one 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 181 

recent writer has put it, " the measure for district or- 
ganization came to be the length of a child's legs.'* 

Evolution of district organization. Organized at first 
only where there were settlements, finally all of the 
area of each county came to be included in some school 
district. The evolution of districts is well shown in the 
illustrations on this and the following page. These show 




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1835 18G0 

Fig. 44. EARLY ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS 

the process of district formation within a county. At 
first, during its period of settlement, only a portion of 
the county was organized into school districts; later 
on, all was so organized, and the towns, with their 
graded school systems, began to develop; still later the 
increase of population led to the development of a city 
and two towns along the new railway, and to the sub- 
division of a number of the larger rural districts; and, 
still later, the changes in rural population, due to the 



182 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



changes in our agricultural development traced in the 
first part of this book, have led to the depopulation of 
the rural districts and to the abandonment of some of 
the schools. In one part of the county eight districts 
have united to form a consolidated school. 

District powers and duties. Each school district, 
once legally created, becomes a body politic and cor- 



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1885 1910 

Vm. 45. LATER ORGANIZATION AND REORGANIZATION 

porate, is assigned a certain name or number, and pos- 
sesses certain important legal powers. These include 
the right to make contracts, to sue and to be sued, 
and to purchase and hold property for school purposes. 
For its government, trustees or school directors, quite 
generally three in number, are elected by the people 
to represent them. At first the elections were for one- 
year terms, but later three-year terms, with one 
elected each year, was substituted as likely to give 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 183 

better results. At first these district trustees managed 
the schools about as they or the people wished, and in 
many states these little local boards still retain large 
and important powers. 

Curtailing the powers in the interests of efficiency. 
In all parts of the United States there has been a tend- 
ency within the past quarter of a century, and more 
clearly marked and expressed in some states than in 
others, to limit the powers of the district and of the 
district-school authorities, in the interests of a more 
efficient administration of our rural schools. Many of 
the duties and functions once exercised by the district 
authorities, such as the certification of teachers, selec- 
tion of textbooks, and the outlining of the course of 
study, have been taken from them; while their powers 
of making contracts, fixing tax rates, terms, and wages, 
and directing the teacher have been greatly curtailed. 
Most questions of educational policy, procedure, and 
finance, it has been found, are better settled if removed 
entirely from the control of these district officers, and 
given either to county or state educational authori- 
ties for determination or settled once for all by general 
state law. So clearly have the defects and limitations 
of the district system been revealed, as a system for 
the administration of a series of rural schools, that a 
number of states (see dates on the map on page 179) 
have entirely abolished the system, while others have 
retained it only in part, and have superimposed over 
it county and state systems of school administration 
of more or less strength and authority. 



184 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Where the district system rendered service. As a 
simple and democratic means for providing schools for 
the children of people under somewhat pioneer condi- 
tions, the district system has rendered, and in some of 
our Western States is still rendering, a useful service. 
Where population is sparse, communication difficult, 
educational ideas rather primitive, supervision lack- 
ing, and economic conditions somewhat uniform and 
undeveloped, the system is naturally of most impor- 
tance. Under the earlier economic conditions, in the 
days of boarding-around arrangements, and before the 
evolution of our present-day ideas as to the nature and 
progress of education, the district system undoubtedly 
rendered its most useful service. The system, though, 
has become hallowed by age and endeared by senti- 
ment; in a number of states few men living there have 
known any other; and the proposal now to substitute 
a system better adapted to the needs of rural people, 
under our complex modern conditions of life, at once 
meets with most determined opposition. 

Chief objections to the district system. The chief 
objections to the district system of school organization 
are that it is no longer so well adapted to meet present 
conditions and needs as are other systems of larger 
scope; that the district authorities but seldom see the 
real needs of their schools or the possibilities of rural 
education; that as a system of school administration it 
is expensive, short-sighted, inefficient, inconsistent, and 
unprogressive; that it leads to great and unnecessary 




A prairie sod schoolhouse. 




A Southern mountaineer schoolhouse. 
WHERE THE DISTRICT SYSTEM RENDERED SERVICE 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 185 

inequalities in schools, terms, educational advantages, 
and to an unwise multiplication of schools; that the 
taxing unit is too small, and the trustees too penurious; 
that trustees, because they hold the purse-strings, fre- 
quently assume authority over many matters which 
they are not competent to manage; and that most 
of the progress in rural-school improvement has been 
made without the support and often against the oppo- 
sition of the trustees and of the people they represent. 
Excessive number of school ojficers. The excessive 
number of school officers required to manage the schools 
under the district system is one of its greatest sources 
of weakness. From 150 to 500 school officials, which is 
an absurdly large number, are required under the sys- 
tem to manage the rural-school affairs of an average 
county, employing from 50 to 175 teachers, and cost- 
ing from $20,000 to $100,000 a year for maintenance. 
There is no educational or business reason for the elec- 
tion of such an absurdly large number of school officials. 
In one of our most important states, about 45,000 school 
directors and township officers are required to manage 
the business of the rural and ungraded schools of the 
state. This is about one for every thirteen males resid- 
ing in the rural districts, about three for each teacher 
employed, and about one for every hundred dollars 
of rural expenditure. Another large state requires 
about 25,000 school directors for its ungraded schools. 
Another requires about 28,000 directors for its rural 
schools, and still another about 27,000 directors for its 



186 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

rural schools. To expect to find this number of capa- 
ble school officers is to expect what cannot be found, 
and this large number of school officers stands to-day 
as one of the most serious blocks in the way of pro- 
gressive educational action. To have a fully organized 
school board in every little school district in a county, 
a board endowed by law with important financial and 
educational powers, is wholly unnecessary from any 
business or educational point of view, and is more 
likely to prevent progressive action than to secure it. 
As shown by the map on page 179, a number of states 
have abandoned the district system (the dates on the 
states are the dates of such abandonment) for a larger 
and a better form of educational organization. As a sys- 
tem of educational organization the district system has 
been condemned by educators for forty years, and the 
educational conditions existing in any state to-day, so 
far as they relate to rural education, are in large part 
to be determined by how far the state has proceeded 
along the line of curtailing the powers of the district- 
school officials, or of abandoning the district system of 
school administration. The advantages of a larger unit 
will be brought out more in detail as we proceed. 

2. The Town or Township System 

The next type of organization, as we proceed upward, 
is that of the town in New England and the township 
in the North Central States. A New England town is 
irregular in shape, following hills, watercourses, or old 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 187 



roads, and in size contains from twenty to forty square 
miles. A Western township is regular in shape, except 
in southern Ohio, and contains thirty-six square miles. 
The exceptions to this are in northeastern Ohio, where 
the townships contain but twenty -five square miles, 
and in the case of a few fractional townships, which 




Tl 



Fig. 46. NEW ENGLAND TOWNS AND WESTERN TOWNSHIPS 
COMPARED 



Essex County, Mass. Area 497 sq. miles. 
34 towns. 



Huntington County, Ind. Area 
86 sq. miles. 12 townships. 



may exist in any state. The New England town thus 
has natural geographic boundaries, and is much more 
likely to form a center for local government and commu- 
nity life than is the very regular Western township, with 
its lines drawn straight across the county, with no refer- 
ence to geographical features or community possibilities. 
The New England town system. Under the town 
system of management, as we find it in New England, 
the educational affairs of each town are managed by one 
school board, known as the " Town School Committee.'* 
The schools of the central village, town, or city, which 



188 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

forms the community center, as well as all of the out- 
lying schools, are managed as a unit by this one school 
board. Each town now forms a single school district, 
instead of being split up into a number of little school 
districts, as was for so long the case. District lines still 
remain, but only for purposes of classification and of 
regulating attendance, and these may be changed by 
the town school authorities at will. The town school 
committee must provide adequately for the education 
of all the children of the town and for an equal length 
of time each year; may close unnecessary schools and 
transport the children to some central school; makes all 
contracts, orders all repairs, and employs and pays all 
teachers; maintains a central high school, as well as 
graded schools; and determines the tax necessary for 
the proper maintenance of all the schools. The schools 
of a New England town are thus managed as a unit, 
and just as all of the schools of a city are managed by 
one city board of education. 

Town vs. district school control. The struggle to 
restore the town as a unit in New England was a long 
and bitter one, and was only accomplished after a 
struggle with the champions of district rights and dis- 
trict-school control. The result of the reestablishment 
of the town as the school unit has everywhere been good. 
Taxes and educational advantages have been equalized 
throughout the towns; better teachers have been em- 
ployed, and at higher wages; better and more sanitary 
school buildings have been erected; the consolidation 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 189 

of schools has been greatly promoted; close and effec- 
tive town supervision has been instituted; free tuition 
at the central town high school has been provided; 
special instruction in music, drawing, etc., has been 
introduced into the outlying schools, as well as in the 
central town school; and one small board of representa- 
tive citizens, responsible to the people for results, has 
taken the place of the many small district school-boards 
and the small army of school officials which existed 
under the old regime. 

The Western township system. In the Western 
States we find the purest type of township school con- 
trol in Indiana and Ohio. In Indiana, one township 
trustee, elected by the people, manages all the schools 
of the township, except the schools of any incorporated 
village or town, which here are under separate control. 
In Ohio, a township school-board of five have about the 
same functions as the one township trustee in Indiana. 
The fact that in both states — and for that matter in all 
the states of the North Central group where the town- 
ship is used as a unit for school organization and main- 
tenance — schools in incorporated villages, towns, or 
cities are under separate control instead of under one 
township organization, constitutes the most important 
difference between the Western township form of or- 
ganization and that provided for the New England 
town. In this respect the New England town or- 
ganization is superior. Like the New England town 
system, however, the Western township form of school 



190 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

organization attempts to provide for the systematic 
organization of the educational affairs of the whole 
township under one responsible board, and by so doing 
to secure some of the same eflBciency which character- 
izes the educational administration of a New England 
town. For this purpose it is greatly superior to the 
district system. It not only provides for a much bet- 
ter equalization of the opportunities and advantages 
of education, but it is more economical and efficient as 
well. The chief disadvantages of the township as a 
unit for school organization are that it is too large for 
some purposes and too small for others, and frequently 
the township lines and community boundaries do not 
coincide. This is well shown by figure 46, on page 187. 
In many respects the county offers a still better unit 
of organization. 

3. The County System 

In a few of our American states both the district and 
the township units have been completely subordinated 
to the county, and what is known as the county sys- 
tem of school organization has been instituted. Mary- 
land, Louisiana, and Utah offer excellent types of this 
form of educational organization, and the Maryland 
form is described somewhat in detail in chapter xiv. 

The county unit in evolution. The county as a unit 
for educational organization is found in some stage 
in the process of evolution in all states west of New 
England, except Nevada. All other states, except 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 191 

Ohio, have superimposed some form of school superin- 
tendent to look after, correlate, and in part subordinate 
the district or township school authorities beneath. 
In some states the county superintendent has as yet but 
few and relatively unimportant powers; in a number 
of states his powers are important, but chiefly clerical 
and financial; while in a few states he has been evolved 
into an important educational ofiicer. County boards 
of education have also been established in a number 
of states. In some, they are largely rudimentary, and 
have few important functions; in others, they exercise 
a number of important powers. A county system of 
school organization may be said to be slowly, though 
sometimes hardly consciously, in process of evolution in 
most of our states, and may be looked to in the future 
as one of our important educational developments. 

Advantages of the county system. The county sys- 
tem of school organization, a description of which we 
defer to chapters xiii and xiv, is merely an attempt to 
apply to our educational affairs the same common- 
sense principles of business administration which have 
been put into practice, in whole or in part, in other 
departments of our governmental service, and which 
have been found to give such excellent results every- 
where in the business world. Under the system as best 
developed, the people elect a county board of educa- 
tion of five, who are analogous to a city board of edu- 
cation for a city. This board then selects and appoints 
a county superintendent of schools, and such deputy 



192 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

supervisors as are needed; determines the educational 
policy for the county, and sets financial limitations; 
manages the schools of the county, outside of cities 
having a city superintendent, as a unit and after much 
the same method of organization and management as 
has been found so effective in city school organization; 
alters, consolidates, or abolishes the school districts, as 
the best interests of education require; oversees the 
work of its executive officers; determines the county 
school tax; appropriates all funds; employs teachers, 
fixes, and pays them their salaries; provides equal 
educational advantages and length of term for all 
schools in the county, and free high-school advantages 
for all children; acts as a board of control for any 
county high- school, teachers' training-school, or pa- 
rental school which may be established; looks after the 
building and repair of all school buildings, and the pur- 
chase of all books and school supplies; and, in general, 
manages the scattered schools of the county as though 
they were a compact city school system. Under such 
a system of school organization educational progress 
can be made in a year which it would take a decade or 
more to obtain under the district system. 

If. The State Unit 

Superimposed above all of these units for educa- 
tional organization are the state educational authori- 
ties, usually consisting of a commissioner of education 
or a state superintendent of public instruction, and a 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 193 

small number of deputies and assistants, to whom are 
given certain powers of inspection and supervision of 
the schools of the state. These oflScers usually render 
a valuable service in the way of inspiration and advice 
and m directing legislation, but they are of necessity 
too far removed and have too many other functions to 
enable them to render more than general service in the 
solution of the rural-school problem. The real work- 
ing-out of this problem must be done by the county 
and local school authorities, the teachers, and the in- 
terested people of the communities concerned. 

II. TYPES OF MAINTENANCE 

^ General Taxation for Education 

This is an attempt to equalize both the burdens 
and advantages of what, after careful consideration, 
has been conceived to be for the common good of all, 
and the value and importance of any plan for taxa- 
tion must be measured, in large part, by how far the 
idea of equalizing burdens and advancing the com- 
mon good of all underlies the plan. If education 
were purely a local matter, such as the maintenance 
of street lamps or pavements, the equalization of op- 
portunities and advantages would be a matter of no 
state concern; but since nothing more fundamentally 
influences the future welfare of a state than the main- 
tenance of good schools, the matter is not one that 
ought to be left entirely or even largely to local initia- 
tive and effort. Some form of general taxation is not 
only desirable, but necessary as well. 



194 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Just as there are four main types of school organ- 
ization and control, the district, town or township, 
county, and state, — rising in an ascending series of 
values, — so there are four main types of school main- 
tenance employed by our American states. These are 
based on each of the four units used for organization 
and control, and also rise in an ascending series as to 
values. As the question of adequate finance underlies 
almost every attempt at the improvement of our rural 
and village schools, a brief consideration of the differ- 
ent types of school maintenance will also prove of value 
in understanding the problem we are considering. 

1. District Taxation 

When the people of a little geographical area, known 
as a school district, first voted to tax themselves to 
maintain, either wholly or in part, a school for the edu- 
cation of the children of the district, the first step to- 
ward the public-school idea was made. Each resident 
of the district paid in proportion to the value of his 
property, and shared in the benefits in proportion to 
the number of children he had to be sent to school. 
Some would share who did not pay, and some w ould 
pay who did not share. It was a cooperative effort to 
maintain what had been decided to be for the common 
good of the local community, and marked the first 
step in the • establishment of the principle that the 
wealth of the state must educate the children of the 
state. Further progress was made when the tax was 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 195 

changed from permissive to mandatory, and each 
school district in the state was compelled to levy an 
annual district tax for the maintenance of a district 
school. Under the earlier agricultural conditions, 
when the need for education was small and when 
wealth was somewhat evenly distributed, district 
taxation had its greatest period of usefulness. 

Change in wealth and education. Since those earlier 
days great changes have taken place in the distribu- 
tion of wealth and in the kind of education demanded 
to meet the needs of the future. Then one man's farm 
was worth about as much as another's; there were few 
cities, and but little surj)lus wealth; the railroads of the 
country were just beginning to be built; there were no 
telegraph, telephone, or power-transmission lines; no 
express companies or trolley lines; but few corpora- 
tions, and those of small size; no invisible wealth; 
but few persons who were classed as rich; and the 
natural resources of the country — coal, oil, iron, 
stone, minerals — were as yet practically unworked; 
wealth and property were somewhat evenly distrib- 
uted; undertakings of all kinds were small; life was 
simple, and required but little to satisfy its needs; 
education was a local rather than a state interest; 
and the pooling of effort on a large scale was not 
then necessary. 

The social, industrial, and agricultural changes 
which have taken place during the half -century since 
the beginning of the third period in our agricultural 



196 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



development have changed the whole face of the taxa- 
tion problem. If good schools are to be maintained 
generally to-day there is need for the use of some 
larger taxing unit than the school district, and good 
schools generally are practically impossible if any 

large dependence is placed 
on district taxation. With 
the increases and de- 
creases in population, the 



TABLE OF ASSESSED VALUATIONS 
OF A SERIES OF RURAL SCHOOL 
DISTRICTS IN A MISSOURI 
COUNTY 







What 


the maxi- 


District 


Assessed 


mum 


taxofeOcts. 


Valuation 


on th 


e $100 would 






produce 


1 


$71,035 




$426 


3 


43,095 




258 


3 


16.410 




98 


4 


22,847 




137 


6 


127,440 




764 


6 


37,160 




222 


7 


26,246 




158 


8 


45,275 




460 


9 


28,168 




168 


10 


22,424 




134 


11 


51,215 




306 


12 


87,185 




522 


13 


32,450 




194 


14 


17,216 




103 


15 


21,005 




126 



ral resources of a state, 
and the shifting economic 
conditions, the inequali- 
ties in taxing power, as 
between districts, coun- 
ties, and sections of a 
state, tend to become 
more and more pro- 
nounced. As a result, the 
maintenance of schools 
by district taxation comes 
to involve but slight burdens on some, and very 
great burdens on others. Short terms, poor teach- 
ers, poor buildings, poor schools, and high tax rates 
come to mark one locality, while excellent schools on 
a medium rate mark others.^ What one community 

* Not infrequently we also find a low tax rate, and relatively poor 
schools in districts which can well afford to raise more money, but the 
district spirit and tradition are such that the trustees and the people 
will not do so until compelled to by law. This is considered further 
in the next chapter. 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 197 

can do with ease, another finds impossible even to 
attempt. Yet children grow up in each, and are in 
need of about the same educational opportunities and 
advantages. 

2. Town or Township Taxation 

This marks a slightly larger conception of the need 
and purpose of education than does district taxation, 
as 'here all the people of the township agree to pool 
their efforts for the maintenance of a system of schools 
for the town or township. A number of states have 
advanced to this conception, and have substituted for 
the district the town or the township unit in the matter 
of school support. The schools maintained become 
town or township schools instead of district schools, 
just as the schools of a city are city schools rather than 
ward schools. 

Town and township inequalities. While this plan is 
a distinct advance over district taxation, because the 
unit for support and the educational consciousness ex- 
pressed are both larger, as a plan it is open to much 
the same objections as the district unit of taxation. As 
a supplement to some larger unit for general taxation 
it is very useful, but as the sole or even the chief unit 
for school taxation, it is so small that any serious at- 
tempt at the equalization of either the burdens or the 
advantages of education is impossible under it. Ex- 
cellent school systems will be found in certain towns 
and townships, while in others, often adjoining, very 



198 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

poor schools must continue to exist, and often with no 
visible hope of improvement. Within the town or 
township there is a desirable equalization of tax rates 
and opportunities for education, the wealthier por- 
tions helping the poorer portions to maintain a uni- 
formly good system for the common good of all; but 
as between town and town, or township and township, 
there is no equalization whatever. The differences 
become especially marked when applied to pairs of 
towns or townships, located in different portions of a 
state. ^ 

3. County Taxation 

The next step in the evolution of a broader con- 
ception of the need and purpose of public education, 
though not necessarily the next step historically, is 
when the people of a county agree to pool their educa- 
tional efforts, in whole or in part, to maintain all of the 
schools of their county, the wealthier districts or towns 
or townships helping the poorer ones to maintain a 
good system of schools, now believed to be for the gen- 
eral good of the county as a whole. General county 
taxation for education represents a marked advance in 
the equalization of both the advantages and the bur- 
dens of education over district or even town or town- 
ship taxation. This plan of cooperation for the sup- 
port of schools is common throughout the West and 

^ As, for example, eastern and western Massachusetts, or northern 
and southern Indiana or Illinois. 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 199 

South, but is not found in the North Atlantic, and 
scarcely in the North Central group of states. It re- 
sults in the maintenance of good county systems of 
schools, as opposed to district or town systems, and in 
the equalization of tax rates throughout the county, 
thus enabling many a poor district to provide a much 
better school than could be done under a system of 
district taxation. Under a county system of school 
administration, as described in chapters xiii and xiv, 
a county school tax attains its greatest usefulness. 

Equalizing effect of a county school tax. A statisti- 
cal study of the district valuations and tax rates in any 
county in any state will at once reveal the equalizing 
effect of a county system of taxation, as opposed to 
district or even town or township taxation. Instead of 
extremes of one to two mills for good schools at one end, 
and twelve to fifteen mills for short and often poor 
schools at the other, a general county tax of three to 
four mills will provide good schools for all, and with- 
out unduly increasing the burden of support on any 
one. The main reason why California, for example, 
has uniformly good rural and village schools through- 
out the whole state, — in the mountains, in the val- 
leys, on the fruit farms, on the edge of the desert, and 
near the cities, — with good teachers and good sala- 
ries everywhere, is that state and county taxation are 
relied upon to maintain the rural schools, district taxa- 
tion being seldom resorted to except for building pur- 
poses. While the district-unit form of organization is 



200 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

still retained, in a limited form, a series of county school- 
systems has been created, as opposed to district school- 
systems. 

If.. State Taxation 

A still further step in the evolution of a broader con- 
ception of the need and purpose of a system of public 
education is taken when the people of a whole state 
agree to pool their efforts, in whole or in part, in the 
maintenance of what the people of the whole state 
have come to recognize as for the common good of all, 
the wealthier counties and cities helping the poorer 
ones to carry the burden of maintaining the better 
quality of schools now required of all and for the 
common good of all. In the present age of railways, 
trolleys, power lines, mines, manufacturing establish- 
ments, and large corporations, the need of some form 
of general taxation, in part to overcome the unequal 
distribution of wealth, will be apparent. 

The great equalizing effect of a substantial general 
state tax, or appropriation from corporate revenue, 
and especially if coupled with a system of distribu- 
tion which places an emphasis on units of cost and 
effort and need, will be evident if the reader considers 
the conditions in his own state. Nowhere is wealth 
even approximately evenly distributed, yet every- 
where future citizens of the state are in need of train- 
ing and guidance. The best schools of to-day are in the 
cities, and partly because the cities can do with ease 
what rural communities cannot even attempt. Rural 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 201 

taxpayers probably pay more than an average rate for 
education to-day, as the burden of support is much 
greater when six or eight taxpayers maintain a $300 
school than when forty or sixty taxpayers support a 
$1000 school. 

General vs. local effort. It is from state and county 
taxation, then, rather than from local effort, that the 
greater part of the necessary funds with which to main- 
tain the type of school needed ought, in the future, to 
be derived. From $800 to $1000 a year ought to be 
spent on the maintenance of a rural school, and this 
amount, or any great portion of it, is too large to be 
expected from district taxation. Many districts can- 
not to-day produce even one fourth of such a sum, 
and short term^, third-grade certificates, poor teachers, 
and weak schools are the inevitable results of the at- 
tempt to make each district pay its own way. It is 
only by a state- and county-wide pooling of effort, sup- 
plemented by local taxation for buildings and extra 
advantages, that good schools can be maintained uni- 
formly throughout a state. 

Systems of distribution. After adequate taxation 
has been provided for, a wise system for it^ distribu- 
tion needs next to be devised. To apportion money to 
school districts on the basis of the number of children 
reported as between certain ages (school census), and 
without regard to local needs or educational efforts 
made, is almost the poorest plan that could be devised. 
The real unit of cost in the maintenance of a school. 



202 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

whether it have 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 children, is the 
teacher needed to teach the children, and the chief 
items which should interest the state in the apportion- 
ment of its funds, after the unit of cost for the teacher 
has been set aside, are length of term and average daily 
attendance. In California, where an eight-months 
school is required of all districts, and where one of the 
best plans for taxation and apportionment to be found 
in any state is in use, $550 is first set aside by the 
county superintendent for each teacher, and the re- 
mainder, which is somewhere near $10 per child per 
year, is then apportioned to the districts on the basis 
of their average daily attendance the preceding year. 
Such a plan for distributing the taxes raised, supple- 
mented by a small reserve fund, for use in helping 
those communities which have raised a certain high 
rate of local tax and still cannot meet the minimum 
demands of the state, as is done in Indiana and Mis- 
souri, will come about as near placing a premium on 
every desirable effort which communities should be 
encouraged and forced to make as any which can be 
devised. If sufficient general taxation, state and 
county, is provided, good schools are possible through- 
out a whole state, and some such plan as is indicated 
above for the distribution of the funds will come as 
near to an equalization of both the burdens and the 
opportunities of education throughout the state as it 
is desirable to do.^ 

1 For a much more detailed consideration of this subject, see the 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 203 

Fundamental needs for rural-school progress. The 
substitution of some larger unit for school manage- 
ment than the district, adequate financing, and a wise 
system for the apportionment of the proceeds of 
taxation, lie at the basis of any marked improvement 
in the educational conditions surrounding our rural 
schools. There must be, in most of our states, a doub- 
ling of funds and a wiser distribution of the funds 
which are raised, if anything approaching satisfactory 
results are to be obtained. The attempt to conduct 
rural schools on a mere fraction of what the cities spend 
for similar educational advantages will never give good 
results. More money for education is an absolute 
essential, and until this can be obtained, either from 
larger local or general taxation, or both, or from some 
form of reorganization of rural education which will 
make better use of the funds now at hand, no very 
satisfactory results in providing the kind of rural edu- 
cation needed can be expected. Until one or the other, 
or both, of these desirable results can be obtained, 
which may take time in certain states, the best that 
can be done is to see that the districts provide as much 
money as they can afford, and then spend it as wisely 
as possible. 

In this chapter we have emphasized organization and 
financial support, because both are of such fundamen- 
tal importance in dealing with the rural-school prob- 

author's School Funds and their Apportionment, Tr. Col. Contrib. 
to Educ, no. 2. New York, 1906. 



204 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

lem. In succeeding chapters we shall point out how 
larger sums can be advantageously spent in the im- 
provement of the rural and village schools, and, still 
more important, how, by a reorganization of rural 
education, a much better system of organization and 
finance could be provided. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What form of school organization is in use in your state? 

2. If the district system, what are the chief powers of the district 
officers? Is it a strong or a weak district system? 

3. How may new districts be created? 

4. What has been the chief curtailment of the powers of the dis- 
trict in the past quarter of a century in your state? 

5. Are there parts of your state in which the district system is still 
a necessity? 

6. If your state has the township or the county system, does the 
sub-district system exist? If so, is it so managed as to be a point 
of strength or weakness? 

7. Are the district-school authorities in your county liberal, fair, 
or penurious in the matter of school expenses? 

8. How many school officers are there in your county? 

9. Suppose the county unit of organization were to be applied to 
your county, what advantages in it can you see? 

10. What plan for the support of its schools does your state employ? 

11. What are the sources of school moneys in your county, township, 
or district? What percentage comes from each source? What 
sources are increasing or decreasing? 

12. Are the schools of your state, from a financial point of view, 
state schools, county schools, or district schools? 

13. How have the changes of half a century "changed the whole face 
of the taxation problem"? (Page 196.) 

14. Do you know of two school districts or communities, near one 
another, where the burdens vary greatly? 

15. What extremes of taxation exist among the districts of your 
township or county? Among the counties of your state? 

16. How evenly, or unevenly, is the wealth of your state distributed? 
Of your county? 



ORGANIZATION AND MAINTENANCE 205 

17. How are the proceeds of taxation for education, and the income 
from permanent funds, apportioned in your state? In your 
county? 

18. Is the system of apportionment a wise one? Could you suggest 
any improvements? 

19. Does the apportionment system place a premium on commu- 
nity effort? 

20. If the state or county school funds in your state were doubled, 
or trebled, would that alone solve your rural-school problem? 

21. Is there any financial premium placed, in your state, on con- 
solidating the schools? If so, what? 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 

The need for better equipment. It is of course true 
that an unusually capable teacher occasionally accom- 
plishes rather wonderful results under very discour- 
aging educational conditions and with an almost en- 
tire absence of teaching equipment. On the other 
hand, it is also true that hundreds of other teachers, 
who are not unusually capable, obtain only very un- 
satisfactory results in our rural schools to-day, and in 
part because of the poor quality of the teaching equip- 
ment provided. Despite our recent advances our rural 
and village schools are still greatly inferior to city 
schools in this respect, and one of their needs which 
must be supplied, if they are to be redirected and made 
educationally efficient, is that they be given buildings 
and teaching equipment adequate for doing what it 
may reasonably be expected rural and village schools 
ought to do. As the provision of improved teaching 
equipment for our rural schools may be said to be al- 
most a prerequisite to rural educational progress, we 
wish to devote this chapter to a consideration of such 
needs, conceiving teaching equipment to mean build- 
ing, site, teaching apparatus and material, and library 
facilities. 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 207 

1. The Building 
In the old days of rural and village education, when 
instruction was confined chiefly to the three Rs, the 
main equipment need was for a building where the 
teacher and pupils could meet together for study and 
recitation. Almost any kind of a building would do, 
so long as it had benches and could be kept warm. The 
log schoolhouse of the East and the South, and the sod 
schoolhouse of the prairie states, alike answered these 
early educational needs. The weather-boarded rec- 
tangular boxes, with a door at one end and a chimney 
at the other, three evenly spaced windows on each side, 
the whole somewhat resembling a box car in appear- 
ance, were the successors of these early schoolhouses. 
Still later, brick took the place of timber, but the style 
of house remained the same. 

The type. Thousands upon thousands of such little 
district schoolhouses were built all over the United 
States, and are being built to-day. The interiors were 
everywhere the same. A teacher's desk at one end; an 
unjacketed stove in the middle; blackboards around 
the walls; sometimes single, but usually double school 
desks in the room; a manikin or a planetarium, bought 
by some trustee on whom they had made a deep impres- 
sion; perhaps a globe, or a map case; a few books; and 
a water pail; —these constituted the usual material 
equipment. The interior was severely plain; the ex- 
terior was crude and unattractive; the site, usually a 



208 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



cm] 



corner by the wayside, was bare and unimproved. Once 
created, the type has persisted, and thousands of such 
schools still exist in almost every agricultural state in 
the Union. Only very recently have we seen the begin- 
nings of any improve- 
ment in the type. 

Why they persist. 
Such school buildings 
once answered the 
needs of education 
fairly well, and it is 
hard for district trus- 
tees to see the need of 
anything better to-day. 
Because they them- 
selves received their 
early education in such 
a temple of learning, 
they cannot under- 
stand why it is not good enough for their chil- 
dren. The farmers who do understand lease their 
farms to tenants and move to town, to secure better 
educational advantages for their children. In many 
rural communities this process has been going on for so 
long that it has selected out and drained off all who 
would have stood for better conditions, leaving behind 
an unprogressive rural population, to whom almost 
any kind of a school or school building is good enough. 
A common condition. Despite recent improvements. 



Fia. 47. A TYPICAL PRESENT-DAY 
INTERIOR 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 



209 




Fig. 48. A TYPICAL WEATHEE-BOARDED 
BOX 



the rural school building of to-day is too often an ugly 
and an unsanitary box, cheap in its construction, 
often in a poor state of repair, and with no facilities 
for instruction worth mentioning. The room is merely 
a meeting-place for hearing lessons in the old book 
subjects. The room is unattractive, often dingy and 
forlorn, with no- 
thing about it to 
awaken any of the 
finer human feel- 
ings. When the 
hard white plas- 
ter walls have be- 
come so dirty that 
the teacher is al- 
most in rebellion over them, instead of tinting them with 
good soft colors, the best that the average trustee knows 
is to cover them with that most unsanitary of coverings, 
known as wall-paper. In its unsanitary possibilities it 
is a fit accompaniment of the common drinking-pail. 
Usually, too, the pattern selected is loud and gaudy in 
color. The exterior is frequently a picture of dilapida- 
tion, and its outhouses are often filthy and lacking in 
privacy. Many rural school buildings are of such a 
nature that the development of artistic tastes is impos- 
sible in them, and many are positively immoral in their 
influence on the young. The lack of respect shown for 
such public property, as evidenced by broken windows 
and weather-boarding, the marking of walls, and the 



210 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



presence of shutters for protection, is not to be won- 
dered at. 

Limitations to instruction. A school, if it is to be 
vital and to exercise much influence, must relate itself 
to, and in a large part express, the needs of the com- 




FiG. 49. A MORE ATTRACTIVE EXTERIOR 



munity of which it forms a part. It should be a com- 
munity institution, adapted to the peculiar needs of 
that community. There is nothing about the usual 
rural school building to suggest that such an idea was 
in any one's mind during its construction and equip- 
ment, and it is with difiiculty that it can be adapted to 
such a purpose. In rural schools in agricultural com- 
munities, instruction in agriculture and in the needs of 
agricultural life should permeate the school and its 
work. Such would give vitality to the work of the 
school and make it attractive to the children of coun- 
try people. The conditions which surround the dis- 
trict school, as it is usually found, are not such as to be 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 



211 





□ n 

□ an on 

□ □ n □□ 
\ n n n □ □ 

nan □□ 

□ n □ □□ 
/ I I I I 



favorable to such instruction. For good work in such 
subjects something more is needed in teaching equip- 
ment than the usual rectangular box. Neither the 
building nor the 
site is arranged 
for working pur- 
poses, and in most 
rural schools lit- 
tle beyond book- 
work instruction 
is possible. 

The cheap 
building. The 
usual rural school- 
building is built 
entirely too 
cheaply, and no 
attempt is made 
to make it attrac- 
tive or sanitary, or 
to provide it with 
the necessary fa- 
cilities for wholesome school life and good mstruc- 
tion. The needs of the past, rather than of the 
present or the future, have decided its plan. . Its cost 
has been very small, and the idea of the school-dis- 
trict authorities too often seems to be to provide as 
little as possible, and to provide this little as cheaply as 
can be done. No basement is provided; the attic is un- 



FiG. 50. A REARRANGED INTERIOR 
Remodeled along good educational and hygienic 
lines, and new equipment and some conveniences 
added. The three windows on the left have been 
made into doors, and the frames and sash moved to 
the right side. Compare with Fig. 47. 



212 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

used; no cloak or other rooms are divided off; the heat- 
ing and ventilation are primitive, or at best only as 
good as the law compels; the lighting is bad; no plumb- 
ing or artificial lighting fixtures are installed; picture 
molding is omitted; the walls are left untinted; and the 
woodwork and floor finish are cheaply done. From 
$600 to $1000 has been a common cost for such schools, 
while perhaps $1500 represents the cost for the best of 
the type to-day. No wonder so many rural homes are 
poor and inhospitable, when the owners have been edu- 
cated to nothing better by the school. Once provided, 
repairs and additions are usually made by the district 
authorities only after much pressure has been applied. 
The cities, on the other hand, spend from $3000 to 
$8000 for each classroom provided, with between 
$4000 and $5000 as a common cost, and in such build- 
ings one finds not only the best of heating, lighting, 
and sanitary arrangements, but assembly hall, library, 
science room, rooms for manual training and domestic 
science, and closets and rooms for the storage of school 
supplies as well. In such places the conditions favor 
excellent instruction and the formation of good tastes, 
while in the average rural building the conditions do 
not. 

Fundamental needs in a school building. In many 
rural districts there are no reasons, other than the par- 
simony and the short-sightedness of the district-school 
authorities, for a continuance of these poor educational 
conditions. Old buildings should be remodeled to 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 213 

adapt them better to modern educational needs, and 
when new ones are constructed they should be of a 
different type. There is much need, in many of our 
states, for some state or county oversight of all repairs 
and new construction, with a view to compelling the 
district authorities to erect buildings of a type called 




Pig. 51. A SUGGESTED EXTERIOR FOR THE SCHOOLHOUSE ON 
PAGE 214 

for by modern educational conditions and needs. 
Cloak- and hat-rooms, separate from the main school- 
room, should be supplied. The central unjacketed 
stove should disappear, and, where at all feasible, a 
basement furnace should be installed. The walls should 
be tinted, and a few good, well-framed pictures should 
adorn them. A good water supply should be provided, 
and, by means of a pressure tank or a wind, gaso- 
line, or electric motor, water under pressure should be 



2U 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



6\S 



on°c°D°D°n°D°D 
oDoQononoQoQoQ 




^'^r^y-M 



Gkound Flook Plam 




Basement ELAir- 

Fig. 52. A MODEL INTERIOR FOR A ONE-TEACHER RURAL 

SCHOOLHOUSE 

Still another and a better plan would be to use the attic for the manual training 

and domestic science and the basement for the gymnasium. See Figs. 7'2, 73, and 

74 for such a plan. A curtain or slatted door can be used to close off the plant 

room, if the light is too bright. Lavatory rooms for both boys and girls contain 

drinking fountains, wash basins, and toilets. 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 215 

supplied for lavatories, toilets, and drinking fountains 
within the building. With a coil of pipe in the furnace 
and a hot- water boiler, such as is used in a kitchen, at- 
tached, an economical supply of hot water can be had 
in winter for the lavatories. Figures 52, 72, and 73 give 
types of what might be provided. 

Library, science, and work rooms. A library room 
should be attached, as should also a collection and 
science room. Both are provided for in the remodel- 
ing shown in Figure 50. In Figure 52 a library room 
is omitted, but cases are provided for books. The case 
and table in the back corner are for specimens, while 
the front corner is for flowers, plants, and growing 
material. The basement forms an admirable scientific 
work room. Such rooms will prove to be very impor- 
tant additions for every rural school. In the science 
or work room should be kept the teaching collections 
and illustrative material of the school. These should 
include scientific specimens, agricultural specimens and 
implements, cooking specimens and implements, pat- 
tern and sewing materials, models of all kinds, illus- 
trative pictures and plans, and trophies won. Tables 
with benches or stools should be placed in such a room 
instead of desks. Such a room, connected with any 
rural or village school, would be a constant challenge 
to teacher, pupils, and parents, and would do much to 
stimulate intellectual activity along nature study, agri- 
cultural, and home-keeping lines. In the basement or 
in the attic, teaching equipment for instruction in 



216 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



manual training, domestic science, and sewing should 
also be provided. Figures 47 and 50 show how old 
buildings may be remodeled, and Figure 52 the lines 
along which new ones should be built. In chapter xiv 
a model one-teacher rural-school building is pictured, 
and the floor plans shown. In the chapter following 
this one a number of modern buildings for schools 
having more than one teacher are pictured, and their 
floor plans shown. It is in such newer-type buildings 
that a redirected and a revitalized rural school be- 
comes possible. 



S. The Site 

Just as the older- type rural-school building is too 
often not adapted to modern educational needs, so too 

often the site on 
which the school 
is located is also 
unsuited to mod- 
ern instructional 
needs. Thrift has 
ever been a rural 
virtue, and rural 
schools have usu- 
ally been located 
on small corners 
of land which were 
not useful for any other purpose. When rural learning 
was all book learning, such sites sufficed fairly well, but 




Fig. 53. AN OmO SCHOOL SITE 

Fronting on a railroad track, and twenty feet from 
a hog-chute and pen. (From a picture by Graham.) 




&aMWK«i«'ffli-';,ij 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 217 

a rural school of the type we now need can no longer 
use such a site. A rocky hillside, bleak and wind-swept; 
a streak of clayey soil, where nothing can be raised; a 
piece of low-lying ground, where the drainage is poor; 
a corner by the wayside, neglected and forlorn; or a 
small lot bounded by a highroad or a railroad; — 
these have been choice spots which rural thrift has 
dedicated to the cause of learning. Small in size, un- 
fenced, often unsanitary, bare of trees or adornment, 
and wholly unattractive, describes many a school- 
house site. Such sites will not meet modern needs, and 
the sooner they are abandoned the better it will be for 
the rural school. 

The site for instruction purposes. Laboratory in- 
struction for rural-life needs — that is, out-of-door in- 
struction in nature study and agricultural subjects — 
ought to form an important part of the work of our 
rural schools. For this good land is needed, with good 
drainage and a good subsoil. The school site should 
be used for school gardens, experimental plats, group- 
ing of trees and shrubs, and for the study of the wild 
life of the neighborhood, as well as for a building site 
and a playground. An important part of the work of 
the rural school should be work out of doors. Our 
school work is altogether too formal and bookish, and 
the farm child has too often grown up, at least so far 
as the school could direct his training, a stranger to 
the life of nature about him. 

The site and aesthetic training. The school site, too. 



218 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

should be made to contribute to moral and sesthetic 
training, as well as to intellectual and physical educa- 
tion. Walks and drives should be laid out, and grass 
and long-lived shade trees planted. Playgrounds, with 
facilities for gymnastic work and games, should be 
provided. Where possible, beds of flowers, climbing 
vines, bulbs, shrubs, and roses should be added for 
the education of the children and the adornment of 
the grounds. Bird houses should be made and placed. 
By a little effort and judgment on the part of the 
teacher much can be done in this direction, though the 
common lack of a water supply and the long summer 
vacation naturally interfere greatly with such artistic 
development. Still such difficulties are not insur- 
mountable, as is shown by the picture opposite page 
217. Where rural schools have been consolidated and a 
central school provided, with running water and janitor 
service, many things then become easily possible which 
are difficult for the little district schools. 

3. Teaching Equipment 

In teaching equipment the district schools, too, are 
much behind city schools, and often such teaching 
equipment as does exist is in large part unsuited to the 
needs of the rural school. District trustees have for 
long been an easy mark for the apparatus agent, and 
they have usually purchased as liberally as their very 
limited funds allowed. Their purchases, though, have 
frequently borne little reference to real educational 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 219 

needs, and the advice of the teacher and the superin- 
tendent has too frequently gone unheeded. Elaborate 
planetariums, charts showing the progress of civiliza- 
tion, expensive relief and dissection maps, manikins, 
geometrical blocks, encyclopaedias, and unsuitable 
books and pictures, — such as these have been bought 
by district trustees in every state in the Union where 
they possessed the purchasing power. Usually no 
closet or cabinet has been provided to keep them in, 
with the result that they have soon become covered 
with dust and injured by being knocked about. In the 
city, on the other hand, such teaching equipment is 
usually bought on the recommendation of the educa- 
tional authorities, and with a view to meeting real 
educational needs. It is also bought much more in- 
telligently than is the case with rural village districts, 
is stored in closets or apparatus rooms, and is properly 
cared for. 

Needed teaching apparatus. The rural school, as 
well as the city school, needs teaching apparatus. 
Good blackboards, good illustrative material for pri- 
mary work, a good globe, good plain maps, good 
charts, a work-bench for constructive work, molding 
clay and color material, simple illustrative chemical 
and physical apparatus, supplies for nature-study 
work, bench tools and garden tools, a Babcock milk- 
tester, a number of magnifying glasses and a fairly 
good microscope, sand boards, germinating trays, 
flower-pots, a glass aquarium, plenty of good books. 



220 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

some playground equipment for individual and for 
group games, — these are the important equipment 
needs of the rural school of to-day. A coal or gasoline 
stove, dishes and cooking utensils, table equipment, a 
sewing-machine, and a yorte lumiere lantern are also 
very desirable additions to the teaching equipment, 
and may even be said to be necessary if teaching of the 
best type is to be done. For all such equipment good 
cases and closets should be provided, so that it may be 
properly cared for. 

Jf-. School Library 
Plenty of good books, adapted to the needs of in- 
struction, are a very necessary part of the teaching 
equipment, — city, town, or rural. Nearly all schools 
have a small library fund, but it is frequently so small 
as to be wholly inadequate. In most states this fund is 
spent by the district trustee, and too often according 
to his own sweet will. The writer has seen Gibbon's 
Rome, Mark Twain's works, Dickens and Scott, Car- 
lyle and Emerson, Macaulay and Hume, and books on 
exploration and phrenology in rural-school district 
libraries, these having been purchased from the school 
library fund by some one trustee. The purchase of 
such works may be somewhat unusual, and perhaps 
is less common now than was the case a decade ago. 
Better standards as to what should be bought, and 
greater oversight of the purchase by the county 
superintendent, have recently done much to prevent 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 221 

such a waste of funds. After all, though, the amount 
spent for books is small, and the selections by trustees 
are often unwisely made. More supplemental reading 
books and supplemental textbooks are needed, and 
more reference works, dealing with natural phenomena, 
home life and farm life, and the application of science 
to modern life, should be available for use by rural 
pupils. Each school needs a good working equipment 
of books of a kind adapted to its peculiar needs. A 
library of 250 to 350 well-selected volumes, with cases 
for additional pamphlets and pictures, and with provi- 
sion for yearly additions and replacements, is not too 
much to expect for a one-teacher rural school. In addi- 
tion, the library of the school should be supplemented 
by traveling libraries, sent out from the office of the 
county superintendent, or from a county or state 
library. 

City and country compared. It is when we compare 
the teaching equipment of the rural school with that of 
the city, or even of a good town school, that the defi- 
ciencies in rural equipment are most apparent. In 
buildings, the average city or town school possesses 
very superior advantages. These buildings are usually 
artistic and attractive, well heated and well lighted, 
equipped with all needed sanitary arrangements, have 
an assembly hall and a library room, often a science 
study and lecture room, are well equipped with teach- 
ing apparatus, and often have, in addition, good play- 
grounds and attractive grounds about the school. With 



222 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the much larger salaries paid, the expert supervision, and 
the many extra educational advantages provided by the 
cities, it is not to be wondered at that they attract to 
them not only the best teachers, but the children of 
the most far-sighted parents as well. Until country 
people and their representatives, the district trustees, 
come to see the necessity of providing buildings and 
teaching equipment which is approximately as good, 
it will be a difficult matter materially to improve the 
district school. Much more money should be put into 
larger and better arranged school buildings, larger and 
better school sites, increased teaching equipment, and 
larger and better school libraries, as well as into better 
teachers and longer school terms. 

Better equipment essential. The need for better 
material equipment for rural-life education is one of 
the important needs of to-day, and only small ad- 
vances can be made in the redirection and revitalizing 
of rural education until such has been provided. The 
cities spend four to six times as much per classroom for 
school buildings, and twenty to thirty times as much 
for equipment, as is spent by the rural districts. They 
also have much larger and better selected libraries of 
supplemental and general books, and a city library to 
draw on, in addition. Add to these advantages the 
fact that the city teachers, due to superior professional 
preparation and longer service, and to their specializa- 
tion by grades, are, as a body, better capable of work- 
ing without teaching equipment than the teacher in 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 223 

the mixed rural school, and that in the cities close, per- 
sonal, and effective supervision takes the place of the 
annual or semiannual visit to the rural school by the 
county superintendent, and we can realize something 
of the heavy odds under which rural education now 
labors. More money, better equipment, longer school 
terms, and closer supervision are fundamental needs 
of rural education to-day. 

Difficulties in the way. It is much easier, however, 
to say that the schoolhouses, school sites, and teaching 
equipment for rural schools ought to be improved, 
than it is to secure the money for such improvements. 
In a series of such districts as those given on page 196 
better schoolhouses and equipment are almost out of 
the question. Most of the districts in the table given 
cannot now afford taxes enough to enable them to se- 
cure a well-educated teacher, to say nothing of im- 
proving their schools. In other counties, richer in 
wealth, where taxes for better equipment could be 
raised by the districts without burden, it is difficult 
to get either the trustees or the people to vote the 
necessary funds. Economy approaching penurious- 
ness has for so long been the habit that a proposal for 
increased expenses now comes as something of a shock. 
Many school districts in the upper Mississippi Valley 
have voted $200 to $300 of school tax each year for so 
long that the amount has become fixed by tradition, 
and a proposal now for its material increase for new 
facilities would bring a record-breaking attendance to 



224. RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the school meeting to oppose the increase. Only by 
patient and long-continued urging and education on 
the part of the county educational authorities, or by 
compulsion on the part of the state, can material im- 
provement in educational conditions be effected under 
the district system of school control. In hundreds of 
districts in every state, no amount of urging or educa- 
tion can secure results, for the reason that the districts 
are too poor in taxable wealth to enable them to pro- 
vide anything approaching adequate educational facili- 
ties, even if they had the wish to do so. 

The need of educational reorganization. In the mat- 
ter of material equipment for the work of education, 
the weakness and ineflSciency of the district system 
of organization and maintenance manifests itself 
with particular force. In some places the little district 
school, due to its remoteness from other neighbor- 
hoods and to the sparsity of population in the sur- 
rounding country, must, for a time at least, remain 
much as it now is. In many other regions, though, 
there is no business or educational reason for the con- 
tinuance of so many small, poorly equipped, ineflS- 
ciently managed, and relatively expensive rural schools. 
The needs of rural people could be much better 
served, much better schools for their children could be 
provided, and not infrequently a financial economy 
could be effected as well, if the long-outgrown district 
system of organization and maintenance were in large 
part superseded by a more rational and more business- 



THE TEACHING EQUIPMENT 225 

like system of school organization and maintenance. 
That such a reorganization must be effected before 
material, general, or rapid progress can be made in re- 
directing and revitalizing rural education, the writer 
believes to be beyond question, and the following chap- 
ter will be devoted to a description of how such a re- 
organization may be effected, and the results which 
might be obtained from such reorganized schools. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What can a teacher in a small rural school do, when she finds 
such a building as is described on page 209? 

2. What is the estimated value of the average rural schoolhouse 
of your county, or community? How many have any sanitary 
conveniences? How many would rank good, fair, and poor? 

3. How many have any equipment for instruction in manual train- 
ing, domestic science, or agriculture? 

4. How many of the fundamental needs of a school building, as 
enumerated on pages 212 and 213, have been met in school 
buildings you have known? 

5. How many of the school sites you have known would contribute 
to aesthetic training? How could they have been made to do so, 
and about what would it have cost? 

6. Compare the teaching equipment of an average city and rural 
school in your county. 

7. About what would it cost to supply a rural school with the 
teaching apparatus mentioned on pages 219 and 220? 

8. What is the average library equipment of the rural schools of 
your community? 

9. How much of a "library fund" is there each year for additions 
and replacements? Who spends it, and what plan for its expendi- 
ture is followed? 

10. Suggest plans for raising library or equipment money each year 
by means of entertainments, or other such plans. 

11. How many of the districts of your county could afford $2500 for 
a new and well-equipped schoolhouse? 

12. What is the average cost per pupil of rural education in your 
county or community? How does this compare with city costs? 



CHAPTER X 

THE REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 

The multiplication of districts. The tendency of 
rural people to multiply the number of school districts 
has been commented on frequently in the preceding 
chapters. To this the laws, originally designed to make 
easy the creation of new schools, have opposed but 
little resistance. Whenever the attendance at a school 
became suflficient to provide members enough in each 
class to awaken a little intellectual enthusiasm, the de- 
mand for a school nearer home led to a demand for a 
division of the district, and the erection of a new school- 
house nearer to the homes of the seceding parents. 
This process has been well illustrated in Figures 44 and 
45. In the days of cheap schoolhouses, cheap teachers, 
cheap education, and local taxation, it was thought 
wise to encourage the process, and commonly pride 
was taken by the people in the abundant school facili- 
ties thus provided. The process went on until each 
township, six miles square, came to have from six to 
nine one-teacher rural schoolhouses in it, seven or 
eight to the township being the common numbers. 
This meant a school for every four to six square miles 
of farm land, and with maximum walking distances 
of from one to two miles for the children. 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 227 

Even the recent decreases in the rural population, 
the decreasing size of farm families, and the with- 
drawal of the older children from the school, all of 
which have greatly decreased the school attendance, 
have not wholly stopped the further multiplication of 
districts. Often the desire of a neighborhood to have a 
school of their own outweighs all other considerations, 
the laws interpose but little resistance, the county 
superintendent can offer but little objection, and the 
result is that another small struggling school is created, 
three new representatives of the people are elected to 
ojBBce, and a new rural schoolhouse soon greets the eye. 

The present result. This process has gone on for so 
long that every county which has been settled any 
length of time, and has reached a somewhat stationary 
level in its rural population, has to-day from five to 
seven times as many schools, and elects to office from 
five to seven times as many school officials, as there is 
any need for; pays for from one fourth to one third 
more teachers than there is any necessity of employ- 
ing; and maintains a general level of rural education 
far below what could be maintained, for the same 
money, if the schools of the county were reorganized 
on a rational business and educational basis. The re- 
sult generally is a collection of small schools, a horde 
of school officials, short terms, cheap teachers, poor 
buildings, poor teaching equipment, schools behind 
the times, and a general lack of interest on the part of 
the people in the schools maintained. This is one of 



228 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the inevitable results of the district system of school 
administration, and the burden of it falls heavily upon 
country children. 

Recent attempts to improve conditions. Much has 
been said and written within recent years, with a view 
to remedying these conditions, and some pressure has 
been applied with this end in view, but with relatively 
little success. In a number of states the tax limits have 
been increased by law; minimum salaries for teach- 
ers have been prescribed; an earnest effort to secure 
more trained teachers has been made; the minimum 
yearly school term permitted has been ordered length- 
ened; improved sanitary conditions for school build- 
ings have been demanded; special state aid for poor 
districts has been set aside; agricultural instruction 
has been introduced; and an effort has been made to 
educate the district trustees to some better conception 
of their duties and responsibilities. The net result of a 
decade or more of such effort is that a little more 
money is now being spent on rural education; the term 
is somewhat longer, and slowly increasing; the average 
schoolhouse is a little better, and a movement for 
schoolhouse improvement seems to have set in; the 
teachers have a little better training, and the salaries 
paid are a little higher; the trustee perhaps gains a 
little better conception of his functions before his suc- 
cessor is elected to office; and here and there one reads 
of a revitalized rural school which is rendering admir- 
able community service. The progress, though, has 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 229 

been small compared with the effort expended, and 
not infrequently the progress made one year, with 
much effort, has all been lost a few years later. The 
process is too slow and too ineffective to accomplish 
much, and because it does not go to the root of the 
matter at all. 

The root of the matter. The real root of the matter 
is that the district system of school administration 
and school financing is a system which is wasteful of 
effort and of funds, results in great educational waste, 
and is unprogressive to a high degree. But little 
marked progress in the improvement of rural schools 
has been made in any state where the district system 
reigns supreme, and but little may be looked for until 
the district system, with its local taxation and control 
and its multitude of little schools, is subordinated by 
general law to a better system of organization and 
management. The unwise multiplication of school dis- 
tricts should be stopped, schools which will afford the 
kind of education needed by rural people should be 
provided instead, and a rearrangement of expendi- 
tures should be made which will provide suflScient funds 
to maintain the necessary number of good schools and 
attract good teachers to them. High-school advan- 
tages, of a kind suited to rural needs, now largely lack- 
ing, should also be provided for all. This is feasible 
only through a reorganization of the educational re- 
sources of each county, and along good business and 
educational lines. 



230 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Equal rights for the country child. Such a reorgani- 
zation proposes nothing more or less than the creation, 
for country children, of as good schools for their needs 
as city children now enjoy. It contemplates the aban- 
donment of dozens of the small and inefficient one- 
teacher schools which dot the surface of almost every 
county, and the creation, instead, of a much smaller 
number of centrally located schools. 

CONSOLIDATION IN CENTRAL SCHOOLS 

The consolidation movement. The movement to 
restore to the country child something like equal rights 
with the city child, in the matter of educational advan- 
tages, had its beginnings in Massachusetts as early as 
1869, and as a movement has become known as that 
for the consolidation of schools. Little use was made 
of the law in Massachusetts until after the final aboli- 
tion of the district system, and it was not until about 
1890 that the consolidation of schools began to make 
marked headway there. Since then, under the restored 
town management of schools, much progress in con- 
solidation has been made, not only in Massachusetts, 
but in the other New England States as well. To the 
westward the movement began in Ohio, with the abo- 
lition of the subdistrict system in 1892. Indiana be- 
gan the movement in 1901, and, due largely to the ab- 
sence of the district system, this state has since then 
made remarkable progress in the consolidation of its 
district schools. These two states, both of which use 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 231 



the township as the unit of school organization and 
management, and such Southern States as Maryland, 
North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, all 
of which work under the county system, have made 
the most conspicu- 



ous successes m re- 
placing the small 
and scattered rural 
schools by cen- 
tral consolidated 
schools. In nearly 
all of our states 
some provision is 
now made by law 
for the voluntary 
consolidation of 
districts, and in 
nearly all a few 
such centralized 
schools have come 
into existence. An 
examination of the 
progress of the con- 
solidation move- 
ment in the dif- 




THi: ciKLO m o/tDCfi OF size syxsouzc an t» 
f>oiornjREOF$i.ooo%Afa>$s.ooaMkroi> 

CONVtYAHU or PUPILi. ^^ 



Fig. 54. 



PROGRESS OF CONSOLroATION IN 
INDIANA BY 1908 

Consolidation of schools had then been effected in 
82 of the 92 counties, and chiefly in the richest and 
fprMit c+Q+oc \xt\\\ best counties of the state. There were, in 1908, 309 
icicuL ULdLCij Will typical consolidated schools, 135 consolidated grade 
oVin^rr V.i-.TTr«,T schools, and 784 Union schools. A total of 19,109 

fellUW, nOWeVer, pupils were transported daily, at a cost of $290,073. 

, •■ , In all, 1611 one-room district schools had been aban- 

tnat no great prog- doned by the township trustees. The size of the 
black circles on the map varies with the amount 
reSS m COnSOlida- spent for transportation. 



£32 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 




Fig. 55. DIAGRAM OF GUSTAVUS TOWNSHIP, TRUMBULL COUNTY, 
OHIO, SHOWING TRANSPORTATION ROUTES 

Nine wagons are here used to gather up the children each day, and take them to 
and from the central school. 

tion has been made in the district-system states, and 
that the stronger the district system in any state the 
smaller has been the success in establishing such 
consolidated schools. 
The plan in Ohio. This plan for the reorganization 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 233 

of rural education may be illustrated by the map of an 
Ohio township given in Fig. 55. This township is one 
which early abandoned all of its district schools and 
centralized the pupils in a school at the center of the 
township, the children being hauled to and from the 
school each day in transportation wagons. When first 
proposed in this township there was much opposition. 
This is always the case and must be expected. The 
first vote on the proposal resulted in its defeat, but the 
consolidated school-district was created shortly after- 
ward, by a small majority vote. Two years later a 
visiting commission from another township made a 
house-to-house canvass of this township, to ascertain 
the sentiment of the people toward the centralized 
school idea. They found but seven persons in the 
township still opposed to the idea, and of these, six had 
no children in the school. 

As a result of the consolidation effected the number 
of teachers was reduced one half, a township superin- 
tendent of schools was employed, and a new interest 
and enthusiasm in the educational work of the town- 
ship was awakened. The total cost for the consoli- 
dated school thus provided, after paying for the nine 
transportation wagons, which was 53 per cent of the 
whole cost, was but $245 more than the nine little in- 
ejfficient rural schools had formerly cost. This is the 
general experience everywhere. Where the consoli- 
dated school costs more, it is nearly always because 
much better educational facilities are provided. 



234 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



The centralization plan. The map and the experi- 
ence of this township are illustrative of the plan. An 
area, neither too large nor too small, is incorporated by 
vote into a consolidated school-district. In Ohio or In- 




Fi<J. 56. CENTRAL PUBLIC SCHOOL, TRUMBULL COUNTY, OHIO 

A type of the Ohio consolidated school. This is a brick, steam-lieated, slate- 
roofed building, wliich cost about $10,000. It has eight rooms and basement, and 
four acres of ground. It is located five miles from a railroad, and is tlie most con- 
spicuous landmark of the region. High school, elementary school, and kindergar- 
ten are provided, and an annual lecture course and many community entertain- 
ments are held here. It is a community center for the township. 



diana the township unit of school administration forms 
a ready-made area for the consolidation of schools. In 
northeastern Ohio, where the townships are five miles 
square instead of six, the township unit is better 
adapted to consolidation than anywhere else. Six 
miles square, w^hich is the rule everywhere to the west- 
ward, is often too large. A location, as near the center 
of the consolidating area as is possible, is selected for 
the centralized school, and a new and modern school 
building is erected there. The old district-school 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 235 

buildings are then abandoned and sold, and wagons, 
somewhat of the type of the one shown on the plate 
inserted in this chapter, are used to gather up and 
haul all of the children to school each morning, and 
to return them to their homes each night. 

Occasionally other forms of conveyance are em- 
ployed, as is also shown on the plate. The trolley car 
and the automobile make possible transportation for 
longer distances, and hence permit of the formation of 
larger consolidating districts. The ride should not be 
too long. Perhaps five to six miles, if horses are used, 
is long enough, or twelve to fifteen miles if automo- 
biles are used. If horses are used the best plan is for 
the consolidated district to furnish the wagons, as 
they can then secure much better terms from the farm- 
ers when they furnish horses and driver only. Instead 
of continuing the old process of carrying a small and 
a poor school nearer to the child, the consolidation 
movement proposes to reverse the process and to carry 
the child some distance to a large and a good school, 
and usually one where, in addition, at least partial 
high-school advantages may also be obtained. It takes 
him from his home in the morning, lands him safely 
and dry at the school, on time, each day, and then 
takes him back to his home each evening, and in the 
same condition. 

Advantages of the plan. The advantages of the con- 
solidation plan may be summarized, as follows : — 

1. Both the enrollment and the attendance for the 



236 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

consolidated area are materially increased. The gain 
in attendance in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades 
is usually marked. The provision of some high-school 
advantages also brings in the older pupils, who are 
now absent from the district schools. 

2. The elimination of tardiness and the reduction of 
absences to a minimum. The driver should be author- 




FiG. 57. THE ORDINARY ROAD TO LEARNING 

ized to act as an attendance officer also, and to report 
reasons for all failures to attend. In consolidated dis- 
tricts the percentage of attendance is about as good as 
in the cities. 

3. Pupils arrive dry and warm each day; there is no 
wet clothing to be dried, and colds and other troubles, 
due to exposure, are materially reduced. 

4. The pupils are under the care of a responsible 
person to and fro, and quarreling, smoking, profanity, 
vulgarity, and improper language and conduct are pre- 




Wagon used in Springfield Township, Clark County, Ohi 




Mm Mm Mm, m^ ^^ .^ • "' *, 

*f .^-;^*^vf ^*^t^*< V";:-^^f i "^ l" 



?>-^i ;-^^U<-. 




Special school ear on Cleveland and Southwestern Electric Line to Elyria. 




School automobile in Imperial County, Cal. 
DIFFERENT MEANS FOR TRANSPORTING PUPILS 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 237 

vented, both to and from school. In some localities 
the protection thus afforded girls is very desirable. 

5. Better grading and classification of pupils is pos- 
sible, classes are large enough to stimulate enthusiasm 
and intellectual rivalry, and pupils can be placed where 
they can work to best advantage. Interest, enthusi- 
asm, and confidence come from contact with numbers. 

6. The number of grades which each teacher must 
handle is reduced from eight or nine to two or three, 
with longer recitation periods in consequence. 

7. Opportunity is provided for the introduction of 
good instruction in drawing, music, nature study, 
manual training, domestic science, and agriculture, as 
well as for the enrichment of other subjects of study. 
It is the one great means for introducing these newer 
subjects into the rural school. 

8. The pupils have the advantages of better school 
buildings and school sites; better schoolhouse equip- 
ment in heating, lighting, ventilation, and sanitary 
conveniences; and better teaching apparatus, books, 
maps, etc. All of these naturally follow a concentration 
of wealth and effort in the provision of school advan- 
tages, and often cost less per capita than the much 
inferior equipment now costs for small and scattered 
schools. 

9. It leads to school terms of eight or nine months, 
instead of the five or six commonly provided by the 
district schools; to the employment and retention of 
better teachers; to supervision for the school; and to 



238 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

a higher grade of instruction. Instead of passing the 
teacher around from district to district, she is retained, 
and the pupils are passed from grade to grade. 

10. Community interest in education is quickened, 
and community pride in the school maintained is awak- 
ened. This leads to community interest as opposed to 
district interest; tends to break down the isolation and 
the stagnation of rural communities; and leads to 
deeper sympathy and better fellowship among the peo- 
ple. It improves the community as well as the school, 
and opens the way for such consolidated schools to be- 
come centers for the higher life of the community. 

11. It brings enough pupils together at one place 
to permit of the organization of group games, and thus 
provides for wholesome and stimulating play. The 
educative value of play is largely lost in the little dis- 
trict school, because there are not enough pupils to 
play many games. 

12. It is much more economical in administration, 
and this often holds true even after longer terms and 
better teachers have been provided. Much depends 
upon the economy with which the transportation can 
be arranged. If a wagon is required for each school 
closed the expenses will be about the same; if fewer 
wagons are required the expenses will be less. In the 
relative eflficiency of the two kinds of schools there is 
no comparison, however. 

13. It offers to the rural boy and girl, and hence 
to country parents, all of the desirable educational 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 239 

advantages which the city boy or girl now obtains, 
and without having to go to the city to obtain them. 

14. The transportation feature indirectly aids in the 
building of better roads, which in turn makes rural life 
more attractive and helps to break up the isolation. 

15. In reducing the number of teachers needed it 
eliminates many of the poorest and the weakest, and 
it also reduces by from 65 to 80 per cent the number of 
district trustees required to manage the schools. Both 
of these are gains of much importance. 

Disadvantages of the plan. The main objections 
advanced against the plan may be summarized, as fol- 
lows : — 

1. Depreciation of property; decreased valuation of 
farms in districts where schools have been closed. This 
idea has been disproved wherever the plan has been 
tried. A poor elementary school on a farm does not in- 
crease its value as much as a good school five or six 
miles away, with transportation and high-school ad- 
vantages provided. 

2. Dishke to sending children so far from home. A 
child one mile from home, who has to walk, is farther 
removed than a child five miles away, with transpor- 
tation, and not so well cared for. 

3. Necessity of taking a cold lunch, instead of com- 
ing home at noon, in the case of pupils living near the 
school. This objection can be easily remedied by the 
school, by using the domestic-science equipment. 

4. Children obliged to travel so far in bad weather; 



240 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



children obliged to walk part of the way to meet the 
team, and then ride in damp clothing; unsuitable con- 
veyance and driver; bad associations en route. These 
objections can all be eliminated by the school authori- 
ties, whose duty it is to provide suitable drivers, proper 
conveyances, and reasonable routes. 

5. Additional expense to parents to provide proper 
clothing to attend a central school. This objection has 
been found to have little weight. 

6. Local jealousy; an acknowledgment that some 
section of the community has greater advantages and 
is outstripping other sections. This is a rather strong 
argument, — with country people. 

7. It removes an ancient landmark, and is in the 
nature of an innovation. This is an even more for- 
midable argument 
with a consider- 
able class of rural 
people, to whom 
all progress is 
painful. The ar- 
gument is often 
really an argu- 
ment in favor of 

consolidation, but it frequently takes years to make 
such people see it this way. The presence of at least 
one hundred thousand such landmarks in the differ- 
ent states is one reason why rural education labors 
under so many difficulties. 




'i^..^.^Mklr!h:'''^' 



Fig. 58. ONE OF THE LANDMARKS 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 241 

Inaugurating the movement; the common plan. 
Two plans have been followed. The one which has usu- 
ally been used in the North- 
ern States has been for 
those interested in estab- 
lishing such schools to look 
over the school map of a 
county and pick out certain 
natural concentrating cen- 
ters, — communities where 
the advantages of consoli- 
dation would be easily made 
evident, and where the peo- 
ple were progressive, and 
likely to favor such an idea, 
— and then to begin a pro- 
cess of education of the 
people with a view to secur- 
ing action. The first con- 
solidated school in a coun- 
ty is usually hard to get 
voted, and requires much 
patient effort on the part of 
those interested. After one 
or two successful unions 
have been formed, others 
follow with more ease, and 
before long most of the 
progressive portions of a 




souTH-\r R li M B ti L I. I 






"1 

-! 1 



v 

I A 



^3 

Fig. 59. WHERE CONSOLIDATION 
STARTED IN OHIO 

The original school was at Kings- 
ville, in Ashtabula County. This 
county is located in a rich farming 
section in northeastern Ohio, where 
the townships ai-e five miles square, 
the people intelligent, and the condi- 
tions for consolidation good. The above 
map shows the progress of the move- 
ment during the sixteen years up to 
1908. Union schools mean only par- 
tially completed consolidation. Town- 
ships in white mean that these still 
retain their district schools. 



242 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



rg; rT"TTM 




L£6€N0 

ONE ROOM DISTRICT SCHOOL 

CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL 

BOUNDARr OF CONSOUDATED DISTRICT.^ 

STEAM ROAD. 

ELECTRIC ROAD 

TOWN 



Fig. 60. MAP SHOWING EXTENT OF SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION IN 
DELAWARE COUNTY, IND., 1908 

Area of county, 399 sq. miles. The fine lines are section lines, from which it 
may be seen that the area of some townships is 30 and of others 25 or 3G sq. miles. 
Rural school consolidation extends over 4:7.0% of the area of the county. Sixty- 
seven school wagons and several interurban lines daily transport about 1300 pupils 
to consolidated schools. The county expended for conveyance 1^18,244 in 1907-08. 
After belonging to the consolidated school one year, one district in Salem Township 
withdrew and reopened its district school. But after one year's retrial of the old 
plan, the patrons, convinced that the consolidated school was the better, abandoned 
the district school permanently, sold the schoolhouse, and returned to the consoli- 
dated school. 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 243 

county can be induced to form unions for the mainte- 
nance of such consohdated schools. This is well shown 
in the map of Delaware County, Indiana, given on the 
opposite page. This map shows how far the consolida- 
tion of district schools had proceeded there by 1908. 

This method of slow, general education has its ad- 
vantages, as well as its disadvantages. Its advan- 
tages lie chiefly in that progressive communities do 
not have to wait for years for unprogressive commu- 
nities to experience conversion, but may go ahead at 
once and plan what is best for their children. Its dis- 
advantages lie chiefly in that some unions are formed 
which are too small ; that some districts are left stranded, 
as it were, too small ever to form a union alone, and 
not advantageously located for joining existing unions, 
and that unions are formed with purely local interests 
in view, and with no thought as to organization with 
reference to a comprehensive scheme for the county 
as a whole. These advantages and disadvantages are 
well illustrated by the Delaware County map. 

Township unit; stranded districts. In that part of 
Ohio where the townships are five miles square, the 
township has proved a natural consolidating unit, and 
it is there that the consolidation of schools in Ohio has 
made the greatest headway. Where the township is 
six miles square, which is true everywhere to the west- 
ward, the township unit has not infrequently proved 
too large for successful consolidation as a whole. The 
result has been that consolidation has been postponed, 



244 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



or only partially effected, and a few one-teacher rural 
schools have been left stranded, and with little hope 
of future union. This is well shown in Fig. 61, below. 
The township unit of school administration may easily 
serve to prevent full county consolidation. 




r CENTRAL SCMOOL * ' FARM HOUSES WITH CHICOREN 

ABANDONED SCMOOL _1> OlREtTION OF ROUTES 

: SCHOOL HOUSES IN USE * ' STARTING* 



Fig. 61. STRANDED DISTRICTS 

An Iowa consolidation. Central school located at one edge of the township; 
stranded districts too far away to join, later on. 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 245 

The county-unit plan. In the Southern States, where 
the county is the unit of school administration, where 
township lines scarcely exist, and where the district 
authorities have no functions of any importance, the 
county boards of education have been able to proceed 
with a plan for county organization which has re- 
sulted, in many cases, in complete county consolida- 
tion. This is well shown in the accompanying map of 
Duval County, Florida, where complete consolidation 
has not only been effected, but the location of future 
consolidated schools has been provided for. 



Consolidated School n 

.Boundary of Conaolidated District ^^ 

Launch Route 

Steam.Roads .. .-.- mmm 




Fig. 62. MAP SHOWING CONSOLmATED DISTRICTS AND LOCATION 
OF CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLHOUSES, IN DUVAL COUNTY, FLORIDA 
(After Knorr.) 

Area of county, 884 sq. miles. Location of future consolidated schools shown. 
Two launches are used in transportation, in addition to 28 wagons, all owned by the 
county. Thirteen schools answer the needs of this large county. 



246 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



The county-survey plan. A third plan has recently 
been provided for in Minnesota. This new plan is 
so unique and so full of possibilities for usefulness that 
it is almost certain of adoption by other states, in some 







District School 
liailroails 



Fig. 63. 



■Il lllllll l l l l lll l t 
DOUGLAS COUNTY, 



Town Graded School 
Township Lineo -^^^— 

MINN. (After Knorr.) 



A county of twenty townships, and containing three graded schools and eighty- 
four district schools. Area of county, 648 square miles. 

form, as soon as its advantages are seen. The essence 
of the plan is that the county commissioners (super- 
visors) of any county may, and on petition of twenty- 
five per cent of the residents must, appoint a rural 
school commission of seven, one of whom is the county 
superintendent of schools. This commission carefully 
studies the geographical, educational, and social con- 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 247 

ditions in the whole county; redistricts the county, to 
form consohdated school-districts of from four to six 
miles square; prepares and publishes a report, and a 
map; and the matter is then submitted to the people 




Coasolidated School n Township Liaes 

Bailroads 'NMIi mH ii in i u District Lines 



Fig. 64. DOUGLAS COUNTY, MINN., REORGANIZED (After Knorr.) 

Twenty-four districts here replace the eighty-seven formerly existing in the 
twenty townships. Note how the new district lines vary from the township lines 
and also how they follow natural rather tlian township boundaries. District No. 
XIV (shaded), is shown in detail in Fig. 65. 

of the county, for approval or disapproval, at a special 
election. If approved by a majority vote the plan is 
then put into effect, and a unified series of consoli- 
dated schools and high schools takes the place of the 
many scattered rural schools. The working of this 
plan is well shown in the two maps of Douglas County, 
Minnesota, on this and the preceding page, while the 



248 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



small drawing following shows the detailed working- 
out of the proposed reorganization for one of the 
consolidated districts. The townships here, it will be 
noted, proved too large for use, twenty -four unions 

being required to 
cover the twenty 
townships. The 
township lines also 
bore little rela- 
tion to the natural 
community boun- 
daries. 

Advantages of 
the county unit. 
The evident ad- 
vantages of this 
county plan of ac- 
tion are that the 
educational re- 
sources of the 
county are dealt with as a unit, and a unified scheme 
for educational improvement and higher education 
for all is adopted at one time. Land and property 
values, number of children, probable future growth, 
topography and roads, climate as determining size, 
educational needs, and natural community bounda- 
ries must all be considered in making an educational 
survey of a county with a view to its educational re- 
organization. The mistakes made in organizing inde- 




FiG. 65. 



DETAILS FOR DISTRICT XIV 

(After Knorr.) 



Area 29 sq. miles ; valuation $199,984 (estimated). 
Eight wagons and routes are shown leading to the 
consolidated central school. Note how this district 
follows the dividing lines of communities, and varies 
from the township lines. 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 249 



pendent unions may thus be prevented. It may take 
a little longer to secure the initial action, but final ac- 
tion for the county as a whole will be secured much 
earlier under the Minnesota plan. 

The same form of reorganization is shown by the 
two maps of Ada County, Idaho, reproduced on this 
and the following page. 




DISTRICT SCHOOL 

HIGH SCHOOL 

DISTRICT BOUNDARY^ 



H ELECTRIC ROAD- 
IE STEAM ROAD- — 



TOWN- 



Fig. 66. MAP OF ADA COUNTY, IDAHO, SHOWING THE BOUNDARIES 
OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND THE LOCATION OF RURAL DIS- 
TRICT SCHOOLS AND HIGH SCHOOLS, 1908 (After Knorr.) 

There were twenty-four one-room rural schools (ungraded), five two-room rural 
schools, one three-room rural school, with a total of 4662 pupils enrolled, in 1907. 



250 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



The need for such reorganizations. It is only in con- 
solidated schools, such as have been described, and 
are further described and pictured in chapter xiv, that 
the educational and social needs of rural children can 
be adequately provided for. Something, of course, can 
be done to improve the site, building, teacher, equip- 




HI6H SCHOOL ,.0 

PROPOSED CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL _w__n 

CONSOLIDATED DIS TRICT BOUNDAPK 

"^ECfRIC^ QAa ■ . . ■ . , 

STEAM POAO, ^ 



Fig. 67. SAME COUNTY, ILLUSTRATING A TENTATIVE PLAN OF 
CONSOLIDATION (After Knorr.) 

Numbers before " G." and " H. S." indicate probable enrollment of pupils in 
elementary and high-school courses, respectively. Roman numerals are used to 
designate the proposed consolidated school-districts. 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 251 

merit, and instruction in the isolated one-teacher rural 
school and make it better serve the community needs. 
With an especially capable teacher in charge it is pos- 
sible to make such schools exert a much larger educa- 
tional influence than is usual to-day. Still, after all 
has been done, the great handicaps of small classes 
and small attendance, numerous recitations with short 
time for each, lack of that stimulation to mental ac- 
tivity which comes only from contact with numbers, 
lack of opportunities for organized play, lack of special- 
ized instruction, lack of supervision and guidance, 
shorter terms, inadequate finance, — all these lay a 
heavy hand on the education of country boys and 
girls. Under the county plan of school administration 
as found in the South, or under the Minnesota plan for 
unifying the educational resources of a county, these 
little district schools can be entirely eliminated and a 
series of good central schools can be established in their 
place. Only under such a system is high-school instruc- 
tion for all likely to be well worked out. 

Such schools natural community centers. It is in 
such central consolidated schools, too, that the future 
community centers, mentioned at some length in chap- 
ter V, should and can be developed. Such schools be- 
come community landmarks, and attract general at- 
tention. If established in a little village, itself the 
natural center of a rural community, and properly 
equipped and managed, such central schools can be- 
come the very center of both the village and the comT 



252 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

munity life. In addition to the ordinary clatesrooms, 
such schools should include rooms for manual training, 
sewing, domestic science, a science room, an assembly 
hall, and a combined school and public library. The 
school should possess space and rooms enough and be 
fitted with all the facilities necessary to enable it to 
become the center of the community life. 



1^ 










Fig. 68. A COMMUNITY-CENTER SCHOOL 

A community school illustrated. The above pic- 
ture of a one-story school, and the floor plans which 
follow on the next page, will illustrate the idea. The 
same idea could be worked out for a two-story build- 
ing. The six classrooms shown on the plan provide 
for the ordinary classwork. The special subjects — 
manual training, sewing, domestic science, agriculture, 
and science — are provided for in the basement, as is 
also part of the gymnasium work. In addition, the 
building has a good assembly hall on one corner and a 
library room on the other. The arrangement of the 
building is such that either of these may be used by 
the community without interfering with the work of 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 253 




Fig. 69. FIRST-FLOOR PLAN OF A COMMUNITY-CENTER SCHOOL 
In the basement the heating plant and fuel and janitor's rooms are under class- 
rooms 3 and 4. The manual-training room is under the assembly hall ; the domes- 
tic science and sewing rooms are under the library ; a science laboratory is under 
classroom No. 1, and an agricultural laboratory is under classroom No. 6. The 
toilet rooms and showers are under classrooms 2 and 5, under 2 for girls and 
women, and under 5 for boys and men, and so arranged that they may be entered 
by the school children by the main stairways from above or from the playground 
by the rear basement entrance stairs leading to the library or to the assembly hall. 
A'ote that the six classrooms form a unit by themselves, and can be closed off 
from the library and assembly hall entirely. Similarly either the a.ssembly hall or 
the library may be used, at any time, without any access to the school proper. 
The toilet rooms in the basement may be shut otf , in a similar manner, from the 
BchooL 



254 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the school. The assembly hall, fitted with movable 
seats, can be used by the school for morning exercises, 
lectures, exhibitions, and special occasions, and also 
by the adult residents of the community for lectures, 
public meetings, rural organization meetings, farmers' 
institutes, exhibitions, or social affairs. A piano, a lan- 
tern and screen, a stage, and possibly a moving-picture 
machine, should form part of the equipment of the 
hall. The library, at the other end of the corridor, 
and also accessible from the outside without disturb- 
ing the school, is the complement of the assembly hall 
as a center for the community life. A children's room, 
with open bookshelves about the wall; stacks for stor- 
ing the community library, traveling libraries, and the 
school's books when not in use; reading-tables and 
magazine tables, and a librarian in charge of the room, 
constitute the essential features of the library room. 

Given now, in addition, a good site of four to five 
acres, with lawn, flowers, shrubs, trees, playgrounds, 
barns, experimental gardens, and all well laid out and 
planted, and we have an institution of which any com- 
munity may well feel proud. In the hands of teachers 
interested in rural welfare, such can be made not only 
strong educational institutions for rural people, but 
the very center of the higher life of the community as 
well. The initial cost for buildings and equipment, 
when spread over the larger area, is relatively small, 
as is also the annual maintenance charge, while the 
educational and social benefits are very large. 



REORGANIZATION OF RURAL EDUCATION 255 

A state reorganization. With about twenty such 
schools to a county, instead of a hundred and fifty Uttle 
ones, or somewhere near two thousand consoHdated 
schools instead of fifteen thousand district schools to 
an average state, the whole nature of rural life and 
education could be redirected and revitalized in a dec- 
ade, and life on the farm could be given a new mean- 
ing. Such a change would also dispense with the need 
for the services of from five to six thousand of the 
cheapest and most poorly educated of the rural teach- 
ers, as well as of some twenty-five thousand district- 
school trustees, both of which would be educational 
gains of great importance and significance. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Is the rural population in your county or community increasing 
or decreasing? 

2. Are new school districts still being formed by the subdivision 
of old districts? Is the opposite process taking place? 

3. How many one-room schools in your county? How many in the 
state? What is the average per county? 

4. How many district-school trustees (directors) does this imply? 

5. Are your school trustees paid for their services? What does this 
amount to per year, per county? For the whole state? 

6. Do you have district trustees' institutes each year? What do 
these cost? How useful are they? 

7. Have you had any experience with the consolidation of schools? 
What was the nature of it? 

8. Do you think of any other advantages of consolidation than 
those given? Any other disadvantages? 

9. Which is the more expensive, — a $1200 school for an average 
daily attendance of 15, or a $10,000 school for an average daily 
attendance of 130? 

10. If the Minnesota county-survey plan were applied to your county, 
about how many union schools would be needed? About how 
many teachers could be dispensed with? How many trustees? 



CHAPTER XI 

A NEW CURRICULUM 

One of our distinguished American scientists, now the 
chancellor of one of our large universities, once told the 
writer that in one of the first institute talks he ever 
gave he pointed out to the teachers present the great 
overemphasis of grammar in our public-school work, 
and the desirability of reducing the time then given to 
this subject. At the close of the address a school prin- 
cipal came forward and wrung his hand, saying that 
he agreed with him thoroughly, and had for years been 
advocating such a reduction, in order that more time 
might be secured for work in arithmetic. The writer 
once had a similar experience, except that the subjects 
involved were exactly reversed. 

The old curriculum. These two subjects of arith- 
metic and grammar have for too long occupied a place 
of first importance in both city and rural education. 
In the amount of time consumed, and in the emphasis 
given to minor details, geography has long been a close 
third. The amount of time given to each of these three 
subjects, and the great emphasis which has been placed 
upon relatively unimportant information, have been 
out of all proportion to the real value of these subjects 
of study. These three subjects, together with reading, 



A NEW CURRICULUM 257 

writing, spelling, history, and book physiology, have 
for long constituted not only the backbone, but almost 
the entire content of our elementary-school knowledge. 
Eight or nine years of child life have been devoted to 
the study of these subjects alone. In the mean time, 
the great world of nature and the increasing needs of 
practical life have remained almost untaught and un- 
noticed. With the great changes which have taken 
place during the past half -century in almost all of the 
conditions surrounding rural life, is it much wonder 
that our rural people have lost interest in the type of 
education usually provided in their rural schools? 

Instead of trying to adapt the school instruction to 
the particular needs of rural and village pupils, our 
schools have remained stationary and traditional in 
type. In the cities notable advances, on the whole, 
have been made, though highly traditional city-school 
systems of the old type still abound. Among the rural 
and town schools, despite a few noteworthy examples 
of reconstructed schools here and there, the conditions 
generally show much less improvement. What were 
once the only subjects of instruction continue to be 
taught, almost to the exclusion of other subjects, and 
in much the old way. Teachers teach as they were 
taught, and what they were taught, and communities 
continue to demand instruction in the same old sub- 
jects, though profoundly dissatisfied with the results 
obtained. 

Why such instruction continues. Such instruc- 



258 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tion continues largely because of the great number 
of untrained teachers employed; because of the lack 
of ability to improve itself, which is one of the most 
prominent characteristics of the district system; and 
because of the, as yet, somewhat general lack of any 
effective educational supervision for our rural and 
small village schools. Lacking intelligent direction, 
these schools have merely drifted along in the old way. 
To the untrained or the poorly educated teacher, both 
of which abound, such formal book instruction is not 
only by far the easiest kind of instruction to give, but 
is also the only kind of instruction she knows how to 
impart. Of rather limited general education herself, 
lacking in professional insight, working without intelli- 
gent guidance, possessing little or no grasp of modern 
economic tendencies or of community social needs, and 
following city-type textbooks and a uniform course of 
study, the young girl teacher is not to be greatly 
blamed if she teaches the way she was taught and main- 
tains a traditional school. To maintain discipline and 
get the pupils through the course of study have been 
for long the chief aim and end of rural-school in- 
struction, and until recently our normal schools, al- 
most unconsciously, have been preparing their girls to 
fit into only such a traditional type of school. 

Recent attempts to change these conditions. Within 
the past decade there has been a marked attempt to 
improve these conditions and to change the nature of 
the work done in our rural and village schools. There 



A NEW CURRICULUM 259 

has been much discussion of the subject, and a deter- 
mined effort has been made, within the past five or six 
years, to arouse trustees, teachers, and school officers 
to some proper conception of the needs and purposes 
of rural education. Legislation has also been invoked 
to this end. Trustees' institutes have been provided 
for in a number of states, agricultural instruction has 
been ordered introduced into the schools and inserted 
in the examination subjects for teachers, and many 
normal schools have at last begun to turn their atten- 
tion seriously to what ought to be their prime function, 
— that of educating teachers for the rural and town 
schools of the state. The subject has also been con- 
sidered seriously by farmers' institutes, the state and 
local Granges, and in the magazines and the public 
press. 

As a result of these many efforts more progress, nat- 
urally, has been made in some places than in others, 
and here and there one finds to-day examples of recon- 
structed rural schools which are rendering valuable 
rural service. The percentage of such schools in the 
total number, though, is exceedingly small, and the 
best examples of such are the consolidated schools, de- 
scribed in chapters x and xiv. The little one-teacher 
rural school, generally speaking, has as yet been but 
little touched by the new movement. Generations of 
educational traditions are hard to overcome, new 
teachers for the service have to be trained, the district 
system of management and maintenance interposes 



260 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

serious difficulties to any rapid educational progress, 
and the lack of any efficient or effective supervision for 
rural education, except in a few states having a mod- 
ern educational organization, almost precludes the 
possibility of superimposing progress from above. 

The old traditional curriculum. This old-type tra- 
ditional form of rural education is no longer adapted 
to meeting the needs of modern life, and the sooner it 
is changed and the rural school redirected and revital- 
ized, the better it will be for rural life and for rural 
education. The old traditional school-subjects now 
monopolize too much of the school time, much useless 
matter should be eliminated, the purpose of the in- 
struction in some of the subjects should be entirely 
changed, and all of the old subjects should be reduced 
to their proper place in a modern school curriculum. 
In the place of the matter thus eliminated, new sub- 
jects of instruction, dictated by modern needs, should 
be introduced. 

Arithmetic. The redirection of the old subjects of in- 
struction is of first importance. The great overempha- 
sis of instruction in arithmetic should be stopped, and 
the problems given should be made practical by reduc- 
ing them to farm, rather than city, terms. Few people 
ever have use for more arithmetic than addition, sub- 
traction, multiplication, division, fractions, and per- 
centage, and it is a waste of precious time to teach 
more. If all arithmetic were eliminated until the third 
grade, much of the emphasis thereafter put upon men- 



A NEW CURRICULUM 261 

tal work in the four fundamental operations and sim- 
ple fractions, concrete problems dealing with home 
conditions introduced, and the upper-grade arithmetic 
shaded off into drawing, manual work, domestic 
science, and agricultural practice, it would be a great 
gain in arithmetical as well as in practical training, and 
would result in a great saving of time for other more 
important instruction. The reckoning of farm crops, 
problems of threshing and harvesting, problems deal- 
ing with the cost of growing farm crops, dairy and poul- 
try problems, horse and cattle problems, problems re- 
lating to birds and insects or weeds and field crops, 
gardening and fruit-raising problems, carpentry and 
painting problems, weighing and sale problems, farm- 
labor problems, drainage and fertilizing problems, — 
such are types of community problems which may be 
made concrete and vital, and with which every coun- 
try community abounds. Some day, when our farm- 
ers grow wise enough to see that uniform textbooks 
for a state are not the best things for the rural schools, 
they will discard the city textbook and demand arith- 
metics, readers, and other books written primarily for 
use in the rural schools. 

Grammar and language. As for formal grammar, 
this could be eliminated almost entirely, and with no 
real educational loss. No greater educational fallacy 
has been imposed upon us than the time-worn asser- 
tion that the study of English grammar teaches chil- 
dren to speak and write the English language correctly. 



262 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Grammar is the logic of a language, and as such is a 
study for mature rather than for immature minds. It 
would be a decided gain if all formal grammar, as such, 
were postponed to at least the eighth year, and better 
still to the high school. This does not mean that com- 
position and language study would not be taught, but 
that such would be taught rather as an incident to the 
expression of the ideas the children have obtained from 
the study of concrete things. One may come to use, 
habitually, good English in the expression of his ideas, 
and still be almost ignorant of the rules of formal gram- 
mar. Too often such rules and such study interpose a 
serious obstacle between the child and the expression 
of his ideas, and confuse and impede rather than help 
him in obtaining that facility in oral and written ex- 
pression which is the object of language study. A great 
saving of school time for other and better purposes 
can be effected here. 

Geography. In geography, too, much time is given 
to the mere memorization of useless intellectual lum- 
ber. A boy is drilled in school on the capes and bays 
of the coast of Maine, the products of California, the 
geography of Central America, and the size and loca- 
tion of the countries of Europe. He memorizes the in- 
formation, and makes his passing mark on it. Later on 
when there is a big fire in Bangor, he has no idea as to 
its location; when it is proposed in Congress to remove 
the tariff on lemons, he does not know that this will 
affect a great California industry; he is astonished 



A NEW CURRICULUM 263 

when you tell him that you sail almost directly south 
in passing through the Panama Canal; and when a 
war breaks out in the Balkans, he has no idea as to 
where the Balkans are or what peoples live there. His 
mind has been " disciplined " on information which he 
forgets as soon as possible, to give room for informa- 
tion, which, to him, it is more worth while to know. 

Of the local geography of his own environment, he 
may remain supremely ignorant, and of soils, roads, 
local boundaries, products, hills and valleys, water- 
courses, sense of direction, climate, seaports, trade- 
centers, industries, and the intercommunication and 
interdependence of peoples, he may have no practical 
conception. His geography has been book knowledge, 
easily forgotten because it was never tied up with his 
common knowledge and his home environment. A 
great decrease in the amount of time given to book and 
map geography, arid an increase in the amount of at- 
tention given to the connecting of geographical study 
with the rural environment, would be a great rural 
educational gain. Sand tables are as important as 
maps, and out-of-door study is here of the first impor- 
tance. No one of the old studies offers such fine chances 
for close correlation with the local community life. 
Too often we mistake, for an end in itself, what is 
merely a means or a tool for securing self -education, 
and are in the position of a school principal the writer 
once knew, who refused to promote a bright boy from 
the sixth to the seventh grade because he had studied 



264. RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the geography of Asia and not Africa, though there 
was no question as to the boy's abiUty to do the 
seventh-grade work. 

Physiology and hygiene. We have been teaching 
physiology for nearly half a century in our schools, 
yet of how little practical use it has been to us! The 
quiet voting-out of the open saloon which recent years 
have witnessed in all parts of the country is perhaps 
the greatest asset of our physiology teaching. We have 
learned the names and the number of our bones, the 
pairs of muscles and nerves, and the anatomical con- 
struction of our different organs, but of practical hy- 
giene we have learned but little. Our teachers are not 
taught such practical hygiene, and know but little 
about it; the people themselves, as a mass, know but 
very little as to sanitary conditions; and only recently 
have we begun to direct our attention to the proper 
form of physiology instruction. Most of this new 
awakening is due to the state boards of health and to 
the newspapers, instead of to the schools. 

The real needs in such instruction are hygienic, rather 
than anatomical. How many bones or pairs of mus- 
cles or nerves we have, or what are their names, are 
matters of no consequence; the important matter is 
that children know how to take proper care of their 
bones, muscles, and nerves. Still more important are 
the great sanitary problems, particularly of rural life. 
Many rural homes and many rural schoolhouses do not, 
as yet, have even the rudiments of sanitary arrange- 



A NEW CURRICULUM 265 

ments. Nowhere more than in the open country is there 
need for instruction relating to soil, water, and milk 
pollution; to the general unsanitary conditions of the 
homes and yards; to the importance of cleanliness and 
fresh air; the care of common accidents and disorders; 
the proper care of the sick; and to the baneful effects 
of improper diet, intemperance, advertising quacks, 
and patent medicines. The prevalence of hookworm 
in the South, and of malaria and typhoid everywhere 
as rural diseases, emphasizes the importance of some 
such sanitary instruction. How and what to eat, the 
importance of fresh air, the nature and prevention 
of disease, the importance of proper attention to 
disorders, and the evils of intemperance are types of 
information of which rural people stand in particular 
need, and boys and girls on leaving school should 
carry such practical hygienic knowledge away with 
them and apply it to their lives. Such information 
is far more important as information, far more useful 
for life purposes, and far more educative to youth than 
the location of Cape Blanco, the rule for the use of 
the objective case, or the ability to distinguish the 
tibia from the fibula. 

History. In history, too, the great field of national 
growth and of agricultural and industrial expansion, 
and the rich field of civic life and duties, present in- 
structional opportunities too important for teachers 
to spend time in memorizing the skeleton of history. 
Wars, individual battles, and unimportant dates 



^6d 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



should be sacrificed for the personal, inspirational, and 
national sides of our national development. The study 
of history should leave a patriotic inspiration, rather 
than a bundle of dry facts. 

Reading. In reading, also, despite a recent enrich- 
ment of the work, 
there is still much 
room for improve- 
ment. Reading is 
still too much of an 
art in itself, instead 
of a tool for useful- 
ness in other school 
and in life work. 
Pupils are too fre- 
quently taught to 
read from a reader, 
but a love for read- 
ing and a habit of 
Fig. 70. A READING CHART FOR RURAL seeking iuforma- 

SCHOOLS U 1. • 

(From Miss Field's The Corn Lady. Courtesy of ^^^^ irom , DOOKS IS 
the publishers, A. Flanagan Co.) ^^^ dcVclopcd in 

them. The reading work of our rural and town schools 
lacks application, content, and scope, and needs to be 
connected, in a better way, with good literature and 
with the other work of the school. More books should 
be read, the supplemental reading should be materially 
increased in quantity, the number and the range of 
outside books read should be extended, the love for 



ft 


found 


corn ^H 


ear 


1 


papa 


I found a good ear 


of corn. 


Papa tested and planted it. 


It had even rows. 




I like good corn and 


some day 


I will grow it on my farm. 



A NEW CURRICULUM 267 

good literature should be built up, and reading as 
an isolated art should be made to give place to 
reading for pleasure and for use. 

Redirecting the school. Such changes as these need 
to be made in the old traditional subjects, partly to 
improve the instruction in them, and partly to make 
room for other new subjects of importance for modern 
life. A twentieth-century civilization cannot be advan- 
tageously maintained on an early -nineteenth-century 
curriculum and type of school, and one of the impor- 
tant duties of school officers, charged with the admin- 
istration of the course of study, is to cut deeply into 
these old traditional subjects and to redirect the teach- 
ing of what is left. The reading and history need en- 
richment, physiology needs to be made personal and 
useful, geography needs to be made interpretive, and 
the arithmetic and language work should, in large part, 
be made a natural outgrowth of other instruction 
within and without the school. In the place of the in- 
struction eliminated, new subjects of instruction, deal- 
ing with twentieth-century needs and problems, should 
be introduced, and teachers secured who are trained to 
handle them. Tn the majority of our cities such changes, 
redirections, and additions have been made, but no- 
where are such changes, redirections, and additions 
more needed than in our rural and small- village schools. 
The special necessities of life on the farm, the peculiar 
needs of rural and small-village life, and the special 
need of interesting country children in country life 



268 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

early, all contribute to make such a redirection of the 
school of fundamental importance there. 

New instructional needs. The center of rural civili- 
zation is the home and the farm, and the great rural 
needs relate to domestic and agricultural life. How to 
make better homes, how to live more happily and 
better, how to improve the farm and its returns, and 
how to provide a better and a richer life for people in 
the open country, are the fundamental needs of rural 
communities to-day. As was stated earlier in this 
book, the school, if it is to be a vital force and to serve, 
must relate itself to the community in which it is lo- 
cated, and must so shape its instruction as to express 
and minister unto these same fundamental needs. To 
do this there should be added to the course of study 
of every rural school, in place of much of what has 
been and too often still is taught, good instruction in 
nature study, agriculture, manual training, domestic 
science, music, and play. Just what should be included 
in each of these new subjects will naturally vary some- 
what with different communities, but whatever is done 
certainly should not be a mere copy of what has been 
worked out for the cities. 

Nature study and agriculture. Nature study, school 
gardening, and agricultural instruction are all related 
to one another, and no school has such excellent op- 
portunities for effective instruction in these subjects 
as our rural and village schools. To open the minds of 
young people to the world of nature about them, to 





^^^^s 'MB|^S''''vl^^^MK^HlnilBK'M^^^^^^^jJ 


^p-4 


^P^ l^^HJH 




If '$fc,. ^M''!''^fc 




^thi^P" ^-«i»-^>r' J(^^_l|jj^ 




' ili ii ^^'^^''''hB 







Lesson in bedmaking. 




( Courtesy, Rural Manhood.) 

Class in table-serving. 
NEW FORMS OF INSTRUCTION, I 




A model farm made in a country school. Page County, Iowa, school work. 




Teaching Arithmetic with a Babcock milk-tester. 
This is a feature of the instruction in a one-teacher country school near 
Chokio, Minn. The girls in this school study cooking and sewing also. 



NEW FORMS OF INSTRUCTION, II 



A NEW CURRICULUM 269 

make them observant and thoughtful, and to give 
them a mass of practical knowledge relating to the 
soils, the plant life, and the animal life of their sur- 
roundings, are the fundamental objects in such instruc- 
tion. 

Beginning at first with generalized nature study and 
involving experimental gardening and growing, the 
work should gradually shade, during the sixth, seventh, 
and eighth grades, into the study of the elements of 
agriculture. The farm life and farm experiences of the 
community offer excellent opportunities for observa- 
tion and illustration and for testing and applying; and 
the work is so fruitful of possibilities that, if well 
taught, much of the other work of the school may be 
made to hinge about this center of scientific informa- 
tion. Few subjects of instruction offer such golden 
opportunities for real life-instruction as does agricul- 
ture in an agricultural community. The opportunities 
for changing a dead school into a live one, by such in- 
struction, are very large for any teacher who has energy 
enough to find out what to do and insight enough to 
know how to do it. 

What can be taught. The study of the soils of the 
community, with reference to their composition, cul- 
tivation, fertilization, drainage, and crop-producing 
qualities, is full of educational possibilities. The study 
of farm and garden plants, with reference to varieties, 
soils, tillage conditions for growth, common diseases, 
harvesting, costs of raising, selection and care of seeds, 



270 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

and values for different purposes, is likewise full of 
educational opportunities. Similarly the study of the 
insects, birds, and animal life of the community, and 
their habits and feeding value, can be made alive with 
interest. The care of chickens and the principles un- 
derlying the poultry industry could also be made a 
study of much value. The same is true of bees and 
the honey industry. Seed and soil testing, tests of 
grasses and vegetables, milk tests, experimental studies 
of molds and decay, tests of sprays for plant diseases, 
studies of fertilizers, and weather records and maps, 
as well as simple problems in chemical and physical 
action, are types of scientific studies, lying close to the 
home and the farm, which could be carried out even 
in small one-teacher rural schools. The value of the 
science workroom attached to a rural school, such as 
is shown in Fig. 50 (p. 211) and Fig. 52 (p. 214), and of 
a good school site, will now be apparent. Both are 
almost a necessity for good work in such subjects. 

How such instruction works. In a few of our schools 
such instruction had been made so alive and so valu- 
able that it has interested the whole community, 
and farmers, who have not before visited a school for 
years, have come to see what the school is doing. The 
school gardens and schoolroom have become demon- 
stration centers; boys in particular, but girls also, have 
been led to take a new interest in farm life and in farm 
conditions. Not infrequently, as a result of such in- 
struction, they have been able to excel their parents in 



A NEW CURRICULUM 271 

some form of agricultural work. When a father finds 
that he has been beaten in a contest by his boy, using 
new practices learned at school, he soon takes a new 
interest in rural education. The work soon leads to 
contest work in boys' and girls' agricultural clubs, and 
to entry in township, county, and state agricultural 
contests. The stimulating mental effect of such ac- 
tivity can hardly be overestimated. 

Domestic science. Equally important for the girls 
is some work in domestic science, given with particular 
reference to the home life and needs of children. The 
nature study, school gardening, and agricultural work 
contain much that is preparatory for such instruction. 
While the work of the seventh and eighth grades will 
naturally differentiate a little for the two sexes, espe- 
cially in the consolidated schools, much of it can still 
be done in common, and with advantage, in the one- 
teacher rural school. The general science, the garden- 
ing, the milk tests, the study of molds and decay, the 
study of sprays for plant diseases, the principles of 
bacterial action, the simple problems in chemistry and 
physics, the study of foods and food materials, the 
planning of kitchens and homes, house furnishing, 
house sanitation, household accounts, economy in pur- 
chasing and marketing, and something as to the qual- 
ity of textile fabrics and their adaptability, — these 
are almost equally important for the boys and the girls 
in our rural schools. It must not be forgotten that 
farming and successful and happy farm life are essen- 



272 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tially a partnership business between a man and a 
woman, and the success of the business depends upon 
the intelligent cooperation of each of the partners. The 
men, too, need enlightenment upon some of these topics 
even more than do the women. 

Beyond this common basis of knowledge, the girls 
should be given elementary instruction in the house- 
hold arts, in household management, and clothing and 
decoration. The household arts ought to include in- 
struction in the selection and care of food materials, 
some ideas as to food values, the preparation of foods 
for workers and invalids, canning and preserving, 
the proper serving of foods, and the proper care of 
the dining-room and kitchen. Household manage- 
ment ought to include elementary instruction in the 
proper arrangement and care of the house, economical 
and practical furnishings, house cleaning and sanita- 
tion, laundry work, nursing and proper care of the sick, 
home emergency measures, and household accounts. 
The work in clothing and decoration should include 
simple sewing, the use of patterns, use of a machine, 
simple millinery, some study of textile fabrics, their 
adaptations and costs, and some study of color harmony 
and design in clothing and in house furnishing. 

The absolute unadaptability of the common-type 
one-room rural school for any such instruction will be 
at once apparent. It is a survival of the past, built to 
meet the needs of an earlier-nineteenth-century text- 
book education. If we propose to offer a twentieth- 



A NEW CURRICULUM 273 

century education, the school needs to be reconstructed 
entirely and to be given an entirely new equipment. 
Simple sewing alone is possible on the desks of the old- 
type school. For this newer work the type of school 
building shown in Fig. 50, Fig. 52, or in Figs. 72-74, 
and the kind of equipment described in chapter ix, 
are both essential. 

Manual training. Manual training for boys is also 
an essential, if the needs of modern rural education are 
to be met. Some parts of the work might be taken by 
the girls as well, as some facility in the use of tools is 
desirable for the woman as well as for the man. In the 
consolidated school, and to some extent in the one- 
room rural school as well, the work will naturally 
differentiate itself into work which the boys will do 
somewhat alone. Besides offering a desirable physical 
relief from the monotony of books and seat work, this 
work ought to include instruction in the use of tools 
and materials, and practical work in construction and 
repair work of a kind common on the farm. It should 
not be confined to wood alone, but should include 
leather. A little paint and concrete work could also 
be included. A good workbench and tools, with a 
grindstone and a whetstone for their care, are neces- 
sary; while a simple set of tools for harness and shoe 
repair, and a few paint-brushes and trowels are desir- 
able. The construction work, after certain funda- 
mental instruction, should be applied to meet the 
needs of the school, the farm, and the home. 



274 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Again, for such work, the inadequacy of the typical 
rural schoolhouse and its equipment will at once be 
apparent. Not only has it no tools, but almost no 
place to set up a workbench, even if the tools were pro- 
vided. While it is possible to set up a workbench in 
the ordinary schoolroom, and such is certainly prefer- 
able to no manual instruction at all, the need of the 
workroom, such as is shown in Fig. 50, Fig. 52, or Fig. 
74, will at once be apparent. In the consolidated 
schools such instruction can be provided for with ease, 
and made most effective in the training of youth. 
(See pictures of the Harlem School, in chap, xiv.) 

Organized play. Organized play is another desirable 
addition to the curriculum of our rural schools. The 
children do not need the play so much for the sake 
of mere exercise, because most rural children have 
plenty of mere muscular exercise. The need from the 
exercise point of view is greater in the consolidated 
schools, because there transportation usually takes 
the place of walking. The great play needs are educa- 
tional and social, and not merely physical. A common 
sight around a rural schoolhouse is a little bunch of 
children huddled up together against the schoolhouse, 
at noon and at recess, doing nothing and with almost 
no initiative to action or group activity. Rural chil- 
dren carry into the school the rural isolation and rural 
lack of cooperative effort, and they need that train- 
ing in wholesome play which will awaken the play 
mstinct, develop group activity and individual initia- 



A NEW CURRICULUM 275 

tive, and give grace to the carriage of the body as 
well. Some playground apparatus ought to be pro- 
vided for every rural-school ground. This need not be 
expensive, and part of it could be made with advan- 
tage in the manual -training work of the school itself. 
Basketball and tennis are possible in any school, and 
swings, rings, hurdles, and parallel bars could be pro- 
vided without much expense. A consolidated school 
should have all of these, with a ball-ground in addi- 
tion. 

The new and the old compared. The comparative 
value of the new and the old instruction is striking. 
One prepares directly for usefulness and eflBciency in 
life, while the other does not. If the new instruction 
were well introduced, it would not only prove most at- 
tractive to young people, but it would be possible to 
center about it much of the old traditional instruc- 
tion, over which we have worked so hard and so long. 
If arithmetic were omitted almost entirely until the 
third grade; then about three years of work given in 
the use of the four fundamental operations, fractions, 
and percentage; then, beginning with the sixth grade, 
omitted almost entirely as a subject of study, but ap- 
plied continually thereafter in the work in agriculture, 
domestic science, manual training, and drawing; — 
how easy the teaching of arithmetic could be made, 
and what an amount of time could be saved for instruc- 
tion much more worth while. If, also, formal grammar 
were banished almost entirely from the elementary 



276 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

school, and what little was retained were used by the 
teacher to illustrate usage, and the oral and written 
language work were then based on what the pupils 
knew and were doing, how easy language teaching 
would become, and what a vast amount of time and 
energy would be saved for more useful employments. 
Why not have oral and written language work on set- 
ting a hen, managing an incubator, selecting seed- 
corn, raising alfalfa, shearing lambs, making an apron, 
baking bread, testing milk, mending harness, or on how 
to make a pigeon box ? 

Possible correlations. Around these new subjects 
of instruction much of the old instruction could be 
correlated. Arithmetic, language work, and much of 
the work in physiology and hygiene, geography, and 
drawing could be closely correlated with the work in 
agriculture, domestic science, and manual training. 
Some of the reading could also be so correlated. This 
would then leave history, literature, and music as the 
inspirational and cultural subjects of the school. One 
group of studies would be for practical training, and 
of direct vocational value; the other for inspiration, 
amusement, and cultural ends. Such a change and 
redirection of rural education, either in the one-room, 
one-teacher school or the school of the consolidated 
type, would prove of inestimable value to rural chil- 
dren, and ultimately to rural life as well. 

How far is such redirection possible? How far such 
a redirection of rural education can be accomplished 



A NEW CURRICULUM 277 

with the one-teacher district school as the unit is a 
question. Something, of course, can be done, especially 
in the county-system states, but in the strong district- 
system states and in states where low salaries and un- 
trained teachers are the rule, the results are Hkely to 
bear but little relation to the amount of energy ex- 
pended. Given a poorly educated and an untrained 
teacher, who has gained her stock of educational ideas 
by preparing for the county teachers' examination; a 
typical one-room, box-like, rural schoolhouse; finan- 
cial support derived largely from local sources; the dis- 
trict-trustee system of control; and a county superin- 
tendent nominated at the primary, and elected at a 
general election, and for two-year terms; and we have 
a combination which can hardly be excelled for pro- 
ducing and maintaining inefficient rural service. The 
redirection of rural schools under such conditions calls 
for almost superhuman powers. 

On the other hand, given a normal- trained or other- 
wise well-educated teacher, with some adequate grasp 
of rural needs and problems; an intelligent community, 
willing to pay for good schools; and a school building 
which has either been built or reconstructed to meet 
modern educational needs, such as is shown in Fig. 50, 
Fig. 51, Fig. 69, or Figs. 72-74; and it is then pos- 
sible to create a new type of rural one-room school. 
Given, in addition, an effective system of township or 
county supervision, and it is possible to make such a 
redirected school as efficient as small one-room rural 



278 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

schools can be made. If, however, large educational 
eflSciency and as high a grade of education for rural 
children as for city children is desired, then the con- 
solidated school, such as is described in chapters x and 
XIV, must be instituted. It is only in such consoli- 
dated schools that the country child will ever obtain 
an education which, for him, is the equal of that en- 
joyed to-day by the city child, and only by means of 
such redirected education will the chief present ob- 
stacles to keeping country boys and girls on the farm 
be overcome. 

The rural high school. When we turn from the ele- 
mentary school to the rural high school, another prob- 
lem in the redirection of rural education at once faces 
us. A separate chapter could be written on the rural 
high school alone, but the limits of this book forbid; 
still more, for our purposes it is not necessary. The 
same principles which apply for the elementary school 
apply for the high school as well. All over our land 
to-day are high schools, located in villages which are 
the centers of distinctly rural communities, and which 
are offering only an old-style course of instruction. The 
chief result of such instruction, so far as it relates to 
the farm, is to stimulate the cityward tendency among 
the young people. Almost nothing relating to farm 
life is taught; almost everything relates to prepara- 
tion for college, the life of the professions, or a life of 
cultured ease. 

Book instruction almost entirely characterizes the 



A NEW CURRICULUM 279 

work of these schools. Four years of Latin, three of 
German, four of Enghsh, four of history, three of 
mathematics, and one of physics, with perhaps a couple 
of years of commercial work, characterize the usual 
small- village or rural high school. Excepting the 
physics, all the subjects are textbook subjects, and are 
the cheapest things the school could offer. A room, a 
stove, and a teacher represent almost the entire ex- 
pense for instruction. In the city high schools, on the 
other hand, we find many of these new subjects of 
study well introduced. There we find good laboratories 
existing for instruction in the different sciences, and 
manual training and domestic science in all of their 
important aspects are taught. A number of city high 
schools have also recently introduced agriculture, not 
because of its practical value for city children, but be- 
cause of its superior value as a means of mental train- 
ing. The village high school, though, remains highly 
traditional, and offers an excellent preparation for de- 
serting the farm and going to the city to live. Its work 
bears but little relation to rural life or rural needs. 

Redirecting the high school. The same redirection 
of education is needed for the village and rural high 
school as for the rural elementary school. As in the 
elementary school, the high school which ministers to 
rural and village needs should relate itself to the life of 
the community which supports it, and for whose bet- 
terment it alone exists. There is little need for instruc- 
tion in Latin in such schools, and probably not for 



280 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

German either. The EngUsh needs redirection, and 
the history reduction and redirection. A course deal- 
ing with social, economic, industrial, and political 
problems should be introduced. Music, art, and 
physical education should be added. 

The science work needs to be expanded. Agricul- 
ture, home economics, and manual work should be in- 
troduced, and taught in a more thorough and more 
extended manner than in the grades. The work in 
these subjects, begun in the grades, should be extended 
and carried on in the high school, into lines of advance- 
ment not possible in the grades. For the study of agri- 
culture, barns, a greenhouse, a dairy laboratory, and 
liberal acreage are now needed; for domestic science, 
good kitchens, dining-room, sewing-room, and an art- 
room are desirable; for manual training, good facili- 
ties for woodworking, forging, farm blacksmithing, 
and concrete work are necessary. A good illustrative 
museum of agricultural, textile, mechanical, and com- 
mercial material would be a very desirable addition. 

The country boy who goes to the city. The question 
may naturally arise. What about the boy or girl who is 
not destined to remain on the farm? This is a good 
question. While but few city children will ever be- 
come farmers, and most country children will find their 
place on the farm, yet, on the other hand, it is true 
that not all country children will be needed on the 
farm, and some are of such type that their largest 
future lies elsewhere. Should all, then, be trained 




A corner in the blacksmith shop. High School, Colebrook, N.H. 



-i:; :■■■■,■ .-^ 


M^\ 




0^ 




m 


^^^^^^^P ^B ^fs^^^E -..J^hi^H 


— r=M- '^^^ JI''."fc#^|lL dH^^^Hl 






"^mmi 



A corner in the carpenter shop. High School, Colebrook, N.H, 
RURAL HIGH-SCHOOL INSTRUCTION, I 




Class in sewing. High School, Colebrook, N.H. 




Class in live-stock, judging dairy cows at the Waterford, Pa., High School. 
RURAL HIGH-SCHOOL INSTRUCTION, II 



A NEW CURRICULUM 281 

as though all were to become farmers and farmers' 
wives? 

What, after all, is education? Is it merely the ac- 
cumulation of a stock of traditional knowledge for pos- 
sible use later in life, or is education the living of life 
and life's experiences, in the best sense of these terms, 
as we go along? Is education the mere memorization 
of facts, or is it also the awakening of the power to 
think, and the refining of one's practical judgments, 
with a view to preparation for real usefulness in life? 
An answer to these questions will answer the other 
question. Education, unrelated to one's environment 
and daily life, is bookish and likely to be ineffective; 
education closely tied up with one's richest life experi- 
ences, whatever these may be, is likely to prove effec- 
tive anywhere. It really matters little whether the fu- 
ture man or woman lives on the farm or in the city, for 
the kind of training which will adapt a man or woman 
to life in the open country will prove useful anywhere; 
and it will prove useful largely because it has been 
effective in awakening thinking, establishing stand- 
ards, and refining judgments. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Do you agree ^iih either of the teachers mentioned in the first 
paragraph of this chapter? Why? 

2. How long has it been since you have had need, in your business 
life outside of school work, for any arithmetical knowledge 
beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, simple 
fractions, and percentage? 

3. Aside from your school work, how much use do you ever have 
for the technical rules of grammar, or for parsing and analysis? 



282 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

4. Is it true that the study of English grammar trains young peo- 

ple to use the English language correctly? 

5. What should be the main purpose in teaching reading? 

6. What should be the main purpose in teaching geography? 

7. How far is the maintenance of discipline and getting pupils 
through the course of study : — 

(a) The ends you set up in your school work? 

(b) The community measure of your efficiency? 

8. What would you need to do to change such standards? 

9. How far does your course of study prepare pupils to meet the 
needs of the modern life of which they probably will form a 
part? 

10. Do you use such problems in arithmetic as are given on page 
261? If so, where do you get them? 

11. Do you think there would be a gain if different kinds of arithme- 
tics and readers were used in country schools, from those used in 
city schools? Why? 

12. How important do you make the local geography? How could 
you connect such teaching with community welfare? 

13. Why is hygiene of particular importance for rural schools? 

14. Why is a redirection of the old subjects of the school curriculum 
particularly desirable for country children? 

15. Have you ever tried to change a dead school into a live one 
by means of nature study, school gardening, and agriculture? 
What did you do, and how did it work? 

16. Aside from the practical value of the knowledge, what is the edu- 
cational value of such studies as agriculture, gardening, manual 
training and domestic science in developing practical judgments 
and stimulating intellectual activity? 

17. Wherein will instruction in manual and domestic work tend to 
give greater skill in farm work and make farm life more attrac- 
tive? 

18. How could you introduce manual work into a rural school, if you 
had no equipment, and no place for it was allowed in the course 
of study? 

19. What kind of organized plays would be most useful with rural 
children? What kind are feasible in a small school? 

20. Are the rural high schools of your community real rural high 
schools, or old- type city high schools located in the country? If 
the latter, why do they continue to be such? 

21. What do you think of the statement that a good education is 
one related to one's environment? 

22. What do you understand education to be and to mean? 



CHAPTER XII 

* A NEW TEACHER 

A new teacher needed. In reading the preceding 
chapter the reader has, no doubt, had raised in his 
mind many times the question as to where teachers 
are to be found who can do such work for our rural 
schools. The question is a pertinent one, and how to 
secure an efficient corps of teachers for our rural 
schools is one of the most important problems now 
before us. Without intentional disrespect to teachers 
now engaged in rural service, it must, nevertheless, be 
acknowledged that the average rural teacher of to-day 
is a mere slip of a girl, often almost too young to have 
formed as yet any conception of the problem of rural 
life and needs ; that she knows little as to the nature of 
children or the technique of instruction; that her edu- 
cation is very limited and confined largely to the old 
traditional school-subjects, while of the great and im- 
portant fields of science she is almost entirely ignorant; 
and that she not infrequently lacks in those qualities 
of leadership which are so essential for rural progress. 

Training and wages compared. When we compare 
her training and her services with the wages she re- 
ceives we are led to feel, however, that our rural com- 
munities get all or more than they pay for, despite her 



284 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

many deficiencies. The recent Illinois investigation 
relating to the labor of working-girls, and the relation 
of a living wage to morality, brought out the state- 
ment that the common wage of $4 to $6 a week for 
young girls was a form of child labor,'»and that $8 per 
week was the very lowest amount that could be con- 
sidered as a living wage. These figures mean annual 
incomes of $208, $312, and $416 a year. Many a rural 
teacher in the United States, older and more mature 
by far than these store girls, is to-day teaching in our 
rural schools for less than these sums, and putting into 
the work a degree of earnestness completely beyond 
what the wage paid might be expected to purchase. 
While recognizing the serious deficiencies of the aver- 
age rural teacher for really effective rural service, it 
must still be admitted that the services rendered are 
remarkable, in view of the compensation offered. The 
wonder is that so many young women of energy and 
moral earnestness can be attracted, even for short 
periods, to such a poorly paid service, and that they 
are willing, during the short time they remain in the 
work, to spend so much time and energy in study and 
in attempts to increase their personal efliciency. 

The natural result. One result of such low standards 
and wages is that, in a number of our important agri- 
cultural states, from 15 to 25 per cent of the teachers in 
all the schools are new to the work each year. As per- 
manency of tenure and length of service characterizes 
city-school systems rather than country schools, it must 



A NEW TEACHER 285 

follow that from 20 to 30 per cent of the country 
teachers are beginners each year, and from 25 to 35 
per cent are new to the particular position. This means 
that short terms of service and a constant recruiting 
of the ranks with beginners must characterize the 
teaching in our rural schools. The best of the class, 
instead of remaining in the rural schools to render 
service, are soon drawn to the cities, where better pay 
and practically permanent tenure are the rule. The 
inevitable result is that the teaching force in our rural 
schools, despite notable exceptions here and there, is 
as a class made up of either the older, least progressive, 
and least successful teachers on the one hand, or of the 
young, poorly educated, and inexperienced teachers on 
the other. 

The remedy. So long as we retain the district system 
of organization and management, there is little help, 
generally speaking, for this situation. While some 
rural-school districts could undoubtedly afford to tax 
themselves at higher rates, and offer the equivalent of 
city prices for their teachers, the great majority of our 
rural-school districts cannot and never can do this. 
Still more, it would not be right for them to be com- 
pelled to do so, as both the burden of taxation and the 
per capita cost of instruction would be unreasonably 
high. Under a system of consolidated schools, as de- 
scribed in chapter x, there is no reason, though, why 
the larger taxation area could not pay the equivalent 
of city prices for their teachers, and so secure and 



286 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

retain the best that are available. Cheap teachers, 
short-term contracts, and frequent changes will never 
produce good rural schools, and one of the most im- 
portant needs in rural education to-day is the adoption 
of some larger unit of organization and finance, under 
which our rural schools may be enabled to pay what 
the best teachers can command elsewhere. Then only 
can our rural schools expect special preparation for 
the work, and then only may they expect to retain the 
best teachers in them. The consolidated school, if 
organized along the right lines, offers such an oppor- 
tunity for rural education, while the district unit does 
not. 

Importance of the wage question. The pay which 
teachers in our rural schools receive, by which is 
meant their annual income rather than their monthly 
salary, has been emphasized first because better pay 
is an absolute prerequisite to any material improve- 
ment in the character, training, and permanency of our 
rural teaching force. Until salaries somewhat com- 
parable with city salaries are paid, we cannot expect 
the kind of young men and women we want to be 
attracted to rural teaching or to be willing to spend the 
years necessary in study and preparation for the work. 
The best of those who get started in rural work to-day 
tend to leave for the city at the first opportunity, or to 
change soon to other better-paid employments. It 
requires a large amount of devotion to an ideal to 
remain as a rural-school teacher, despite the large 



A NEW TEACHER 287 

opportunities for usefulness, when the work does not 
carry a living wage. We may talk as much as we like 
about giving the country boy and country girl a 
chance, and of equalizing the educational advantages 
as between city and country children, but this can 
never be done until the country can economically 
compete with the city for teachers and for educational 
leaders. So long as the cities can continue to draw off 
the best, by reason of longer terms, better salaries, 
better tenure, and better teaching and living condi- 
tions, so long will rural education be at a discount, and 
so long will discerning farmers continue to send their 
children to the city to secure the better educational 
advantages offered there. 

The fact that the present low salaries and poor con- 
ditions surrounding rural education are wholly unnec- 
essary, and that salaries of from $800 to $1000 a year 
could be paid rural teachers, and good educational 
conditions provided, if a proper unit of educational 
organization and taxation were once instituted, makes 
the present conditions all the more inexcusable. Once 
place rural-school teaching on a financial basis com- 
parable with that of the cities, and we can then de- 
mand almost any preparation for the work, within 
reason, which the peculiar necessities of the case seem 
to require. Teaching in the country is not different 
from farming, in that both must be economically 
profitable if they are to attract and retain the class we 
want to keep on the farm. The writer has known many 



288 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

good teachers, who like the country better and would 
much prefer to teach there, but who simply cannot 
afford to do so under the present economic conditions. 
Present status of teacher training. When we turn 
from the pay to the training of our rural teachers, the 
situation is almost equally bad. In most of our states 
the standards for entering the work are low, while the 
means provided for helping and improving teachers in 
service are wholly inadequate. Nowhere is good edu- 
cational preparation and proper professional insight 
needed more than in our rural schools, where the 
teacher must work alone almost the whole year 
through. If untrained and poorly educated teachers 
are to start anywhere, under present conditions, it 
ought to be in the cities, where there are superin- 
tendents, supervising principals, special supervisors, 
teachers' meetings, and study classes for the constant 
improvement of those in service. The cities, however, 
do not need to, and usually will not, receive such 
teachers. A good high-school education, followed by 
normal-school training or by an apprenticeship in the 
country, is to-day a somewhat general prerequisite to 
city service. For the country schools, on the other 
hand, sixteen or seventeen years of age and a third- 
grade county teacher's certificate, obtained by coach- 
ing up on and passing an examination on the old 
common-school subjects, plus the good will of some 
district trustee, is about all that is necessary to enter 
the service. The fact that the new teacher too often 



A NEW TEACHER 289 

lacks general education, knows almost nothing as to 
rural needs and problems, has little or no professional 
insight and interest, and is almost wholly ignorant of 
the great worlds of science, industry, and agriculture, 
counts for little in her certification or her employment. 
It is the competition of such teachers which keeps 
down wages and drives the better teachers to the 
cities or into other fields of service. As soon as it can 
be done, the county examination, as a means of enter- 
ing the teaching ranks, ought to be abandoned in 
favor of certification based upon having first obtained 
a certain minimum of general education and profes- 
sional training. The further continuance of such 
certificates ought also to be based upon the teachers 
showing growth in knowledge and in teaching power. 
New attention to the rural-teacher problem. During 
the past ten years, new attention has been directed to 
the special problem of preparing teachers for service in 
the rural schools. As the complex problems of rural 
life and rural needs have dawned upon us, we have 
slowly begun to realize that their solution not only 
demands a new type of rural education, but that edu- 
cation is also the key to the solution. To try to meet 
such new needs the State of Michigan, in 1897, first 
ordered that each of the state normal schools should 
organize a special course for the preparation of rural 
teachers. In 1902, the Indiana State Normal School 
made similar provision, by organizing a rural school in 
connection with its normal work. In 1907, the State 



290 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Normal School at Kirksville, Missouri, did the same 
thing. This Missouri school has rendered special 
service to rural education, and the rural-school build- 
ing provided is described in some detail in chapter xiv. 
Since these beginnings, a number of other state normal 
schools have begun to turn their attention to this 
problem, though the number doing so as yet is alto- 
gether too small. With the growth of the consolidated 
school, however, the normal schools will be forced 
to turn their attention more and more to this new 
aspect of rural education, and to offer training and 
courses that will give some adequate conception of the 
problems of rural life. The training that will best pre- 
pare for city graded work, which is what our normal 
schools now give, will not best prepare for rural service. 
The special educational and social needs of the city 
should characterize one; those of rural life the other. 
Teachers' training classes. Despairing of ever 
securing enough trained teachers for the schools of the 
state through the regular state normal schools. New 
York, in 1894, provided for the establishment of 
teachers' training classes in the high schools of the 
state. Maine did the same in 1901, Michigan in 1903, 
and Minnesota and Nebraska in 1905. By 1911, 
thirteen states had made provision for such training 
classes, and 624 such classes had been established in 
the high schools of these states. In a number of addi- 
tional states the legislatures of 1912 and 1913 pro- 
vided for such training classes, and the number of such 



A NEW TEACHER 



291 



classes is now probably twice as large as two years ago. 
In 1889, Wisconsin also provided for the establishment 
of county training schools, in counties not containing 
a state normal school, and twenty-seven of these had 
been organized by 1911. All of these schools are in- 
tended specifically for the training of teachers for the 
rural schools of the county; the course is usually one 
year long; and nearly all of the states grant to the 
graduates of such a course a short-term teacher's 
certificate, valid only for teaching in the rural schools 
of the county. The rapid development of such train- 
ing classes may be illustrated by Nebraska, where the 
high-school training classes were first established in 
1905, and where the movement has been very success- 
ful. 



Year 


No. of 
classes 


Students 
enrolled 


Teachers 
graduated 


1907-08 


64 

92 
103 
107 
143 
153 
170(.?) 


1212 
1502 
1819 
2112 
3011 
3056 
S500{?) 


550 


1908-09 


763 


1909-10 


8Q4 


1910-11 . . . 


Q11 


1911-12 


1002 


1912-13 


1350 


1913-14 







The prime object in the establishment of such train- 
ing classes has been to secure some professional prepa- 
ration for the teachers in the rural schools of the state. 
In this, these classes have been very successful. In 
New York, approximately seven thousand such grad- 



292 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

uates are now teaching in the rural schools. In Ne- 
braska, probably three thousand teachers so trained are 
now engaged in teaching. The course is short, being 
but one year in duration in most of the schools, and no- 
where over two years in length. In some of the states, 
even elementary-school graduates are admitted to the 
course, though the usual plan is to offer such work only 
in the third and fourth years of the high-school course, 
and in place of the other instruction. A one-year 
course, offered as a substitute for the last year of the 
regular course, is perhaps the most common plan. 

Nature of the instruction offered. As might natu- 
rally happen in the beginning of such a movement, the 
instruction offered in most cases follows too closely the 
old traditional lines, and prepares primarily for teach- 
ing a traditional old-type rural school. This is well 
illustrated by the following courses of instruction, 
reproduced from those now in use in certain training 
classes in two different states : — 

I. ONE-YEAR COURSE 

(Open to high-school students, and also to elementary-school 
graduates) 

First half-year Second half-year 

1. Arithmetic. 1. U.S. history and civics. 

2. Geography, physiology, na- 2. Grammar, language, composi- 

ture study, and agriculture. tion, and penmanship. 

3. Reading, spelling, and draw- 3. School law. 

ing. 

4. Psychology, principles of edu- 4. History of education. 

cation, and school manage- 
ment. 



A NEW TEACHER 293 

II. ONE-YEAR COURSE 

(Intended primarily for high-school graduates) 





First half-year 




Second half-year 


1. 


Reading. 


1. 


American literature. 


2. 


Grammar and composition. 


2. 


U.S. history. 


3. 


Geography. 


3. 


Physiology. 


4. 


School manual and law. 


4. 


Agriculture. 


5. 


Psychology and principles of 


5. 


Observation, school manage- 




teaching. 




ment, and practice. 



Why such courses are inadequate. Such prepara- 
tion, while perhaps good enough of its kind, is not the 
kind that is needed to meet the peculiar needs of rural 
education of to-day. It prepares primarily for the old 
type of rural school, and not for the new one which is 
needed. In the first course reproduced, which is used 
uniformly in one of our large and important states, 
there is nothing in it to give intending rural teachers 
any conception whatever as to the new rural-life prob- 
lems and new rural needs, or how to make themselves 
of real rural service. In the second course, the half- 
year of agriculture is the only modern subject. On the 
contrary, there is a great overemphasis, in each, of 
the old common-school subjects. It may, of course, be 
said that the students in these classes do not know 
these old subjects. This is probably true, but if they are 
not capable, after a little help and direction, of getting 
up these subjects themselves, and fast enough to keep 
ahead of a class, they are not likely to prove of much 
value as teachers. They knew these subjects once and 
have forgotten them, and a year after this second drill. 



294 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

if they do not at once teach the subjects, they will have 
forgotten them again. There are too many subjects to 
be taught, of so much more importance, and subjects 
which cannot be worked up from books alone, that only 
a minimum of time ought to be put on these old subjects. 
Such training courses are, of course, better than no train- 
ing at all, but they are not what should be given to en- 
able young people to render the kind of rural service de- 
manded by the conditions of twentieth-century farm life. 
Probable future development. These high-school 
training courses are now rendering a useful service in 
providing some training for the teachers of our rural 
schools. The probabilities are, though, that these 
high-school training classes supply a temporary rather 
than a permanent need, and that the line of evolu- 
tion in the future will involve both the development 
of combined county normal-training and agricultural 
high schools, and the turning of our state normal 
schools back to what ought to be one of their main 
functions. The development of agricultural and 
normal-training high schools, somewhat after the 
Wisconsin type, offering four-year courses intended to 
prepare young people directly for rural life and rural 
service, ought to become a prominent feature of a 
future county unit of educational organization. Under 
a county plan for consolidated schools, such as is out- 
lined in chapter x, and with the county unit for educa- 
tional organization and administration, as is outlined 
in chapter xiii, the organization of such agricultural 



A NEW TEACHER 295 

and normal-training high schools would become a 
marked feature of the school system of every agri- 
cultural county of any size in area and population. 
Agriculture would, of course, be prominent in such 
schools, as would studies intended to prepare for other 
rural-life needs. Preparation for rural-school teach- 
ing would, in such schools, be closely correlated with 
preparation for rural living, and the teachers' training 
course would be so shaped as to involve the whole four 
years of training, with specialization during the fourth 
year, or perhaps the third and fourth years. No ade- 
quate preparation for rural teaching of the right kind 
can be given in one year. The whole teachers' training, 
with emphasis on science, music, drawing, manual 
and domestic work, and English, should lead up to the 
last or professional year as its culmination. 

A suggested one-year course. Assuming, however, 
that for the present but one year can be devoted to 
such preparation, and that the course is to be open to 
students of all kinds of previous training, of what 
ought the training to consist? The following is one 
suggestion for such a course : — 

SUGGESTED ONE-YEAR COURSE FOR RURAL TEACHERS 

(To be divided into four terms, of ten weeks each) 

First term Second term 

1. Language work. 1. Reading and literature. , 

2. Geography. 2. Arithmetic. 

3. Agriculture. 3. Nature study. 

4. Arts group. (See below.) 4. Arts group. (See below.) 

5. Rural problems. 5. Rural problems (continued). 

6. Educational psychology. 6. Principles of teaching. 



296 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

Third term Fourth term 

1. History and civics. 1. Library work. 

2. Physiology. 2. Hygiene and sanitation. 

3. Nature study (continued). 3. Agriculture (resumed). 

4. Arts group. (See below.) 4. Arts group. (See below.) 

5. School manual, law, ctc.^ 5. Observation and practice.^ 

6. School management. 6. Education and the state. 

Arts group 

Drawing; music; and games, organized play and gymnastics; — 
each one lesson a week throughout the year. Manual training, two 
lessons each week, first half-year. Domestic science, two lessons each 
week, second half-year. 

EXPLANATORY 

Common-school subjects. In the work in the common- 
school subjects (language work, geography, reading and lit- 
erature, arithmetic, history, and civics), the purpose is not so 
much to "review" and relearn these subjects, as to study 
plans for teaching them; what to emphasize and what to 
omit; and plans for correlating the work with other school 
instruction and with the community life. The possibilities of 
farm arithmetic, farm language work and essays, and home 
geography would naturally be emphasized. In reading and 
literature some drill on the use of the voice should be included. 

Physiology and hygiene. After a very short review of phy- 
siology proper, the work should go into personal and commu- 
nity hygiene, and should include such topics as bacteria, home 
and yard sanitation, schoolhouse sanitation, common diseases, 
proper care of the sick, first aid to the injured, detection of 
common defects in school children, and the personal health of 
the teacher. 

Agriculture and nature study. A year devoted to practical 
work in agriculture and science. Agriculture is studied in the 
fall and spring, and scientific experiments, particularly in 
chemistry and physics, are carried on during the winter. 
School gardening and farm observation should be an important 

^ The order for these two subjects to be reversed, for one half of 
the pupils. 



A NEW TEACHER 297 

part of the work. The importance of a sunny conservatory 
corner in the schoolroom for growing plants, such as is shown 
in Fig. 52, p. 214, or of the workroom shown in Fig. 50, p. 
211, will now be apparent. The work should be as practical as 
is possible, and students should be shown how to obtain and 
use agricultural bulletins, and how to organize and conduct 
boys' and girls' clubs. 

Library work. A ten-weeks' course, on the selection, care, and 
use of books, intended to put teachers into sympathetic touch 
with the traveling and rural-library movement, and to train 
them in the care of the school library. What type of books to 
buy for the school library; what kind of literature children 
ought to read ; what types of supplemental books to order, and 
how to use them; and also an acquaintance with a number of 
the most useful books for a rural teacher, as helps and for 
stimulating further professional growth, should be included in 
this course. 

Rural problems. A course dealing primarily with the rural- 
life problem, what can be done to solve it, and how to do it. 
The course might be called one in rural sociology, if that is a 
more expressive term. It should set forth the rural-life prob- 
lem as it has developed and now is, showing the country 
teacher's relation to it; should show the place of the church, 
the library, the school, the Grange, the Y.M.C.A., etc., in its 
solution; should point out the need of revitalizing rural educa- 
tion and of redirecting the rural school; should reveal to the 
new teacher the economic and social needs; should empha- 
size the importance of slowly educating rural communities to 
see the need for improving their home life, the community life, 
and the school, and the many advantages of the consolidated 
school for such purposes; and finally the need and place for 
leadership on the part of the country teacher, and the ways in 
which she may exercise it. 

Arts group. The instruction here should be of a very practi- 
cal type, such as how to teach drawing and music in the rural 
school; how to organize games and sports, what kind of equip- 
ment to get, and how to get it; what kind of gymnastics to 
teach; the importance of exercise for the teacher and for rural 
children; and how to organize local and inter-community 
contests. 



298 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The manual training should be adapted to rural needs, and 
should include instruction in how to teach the use and care of 
tools for work in wood, leather, and perhaps concrete, with 
instruction as to what to do in these various lines. In domestic 
science, the work should include the essentials of cooking and 
sewing, the chemistry of the kitchen, the use of the sewing- 
machine, kitchen appliances, table service, etc. It will be val- 
uable for teachers to know manual and domestic work, even 
though the school in which they teach does not as yet offer any 
facilities for instruction in such subjects. 

Professional work. The first ten weeks should be given to a 
very simple and very concrete study of the essentials of edu- 
cational psychology; the second ten weeks to a study of the 
fundamental principles underlying the organization and man- 
agement of a rural school ; the third ten weeks to school manage- 
ment, with special reference to rural-school needs ; and the last 
ten weeks to a study intended to enlarge the teacher's horizon 
and give inspiration for service, and dealing with the place and 
purpose of public education in the state and the why of public 
education. During the third term also the school manual, or 
course of study, for the state or county is read through and 
explained; the small amount of school law a rural teacher 
needs to know is stated ; and the use of the school code shown. 
In the last ten weeks there is both observation and practice in 
teaching, and training in how to make reports and keep a 
school register is given. To prevent a congestion in the prac- 
tice work, the order of giving the practice teaching and the 
school manual and law work should be reversed, for one half of 
the pupils. 

What such a course prepares for. With some such 
course of training as the above, the new rural teacher is 
prepared to go out and get results and to improve 
social and educational conditions. The emphasis, it 
will be noticed, is placed upon knowing something as 
to needs, means, and ends, rather than upon mere 
practice in teaching the traditional old-type common- 



A NEW TEACHER 299 

school subjects. The course is intended to develop a 
useful, thinking teacher, capable of increasingly useful 
service, rather than a mere teaching apprentice along 
the old traditional lines. 

Such a teacher has been shown how to improve the 
schoolhouse and grounds ; how to get school gardening 
and agriculture started; how to get a bench and some 
tools into the schoolhouse, and what to do with them; 
how to start sewing with the girls, and how to awaken 
an interest in cooking and home work; and how to 
enrich the instruction in the old subjects, and relate 
them to community life. Such a teacher, also, will see 
the advantages of getting acquainted with the people 
of the community, and will discover ways of socializing 
and improving the rural life. She will understand both 
the strength and weakness of the school in which she 
works, and, instead of talking vaguely about the edu- 
cational rights of the country child, will set to work to 
improve the existing school and schoolhouse. She will 
also know the greater advantages of the consolidated 
school, and perhaps do something to awaken a senti- 
ment in favor of providing such. 

Everything cannot be done at once, or in a year, 
for rural communities are proverbially slow to move. 
They follow those only whom they know and trust, 
and real rural service can never be rendered by the 
city teacher who goes to the country " to get experi- 
ence," takes but little interest in the community, and 
never gets into sympathetic touch with rural life and 



300 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

rural needs. The story of the two churches, given in 
chapter vi, each of which is a story of ten j^ears of 
effort, and where it took time in each case to see that 
any progress was being made, are good illustrations of 
rural-community service and good illustrations for the 
rural teacher to keep in mind. 

The rural high-school teacher. When we pass from 
the elementary -school field to the high school, some- 
thing of the same need for a new type of a rural and 
village high-school teacher is evident. Of teachers of 
Latin, English, history, and mathematics of the pre- 
vailing type, there is a great surplus, while of teachers 
of the newer subjects and with the newer attitude in 
the old subjects, there is a shortage. This is only 
natural in a time of changing educational emphasis, 
and, in a country where the emphasis has been shifted 
so recently and so quickly as in our own, the lack of 
adjustment to new conditions, in the training of high- 
school teachers, is only natural. Colleges and univer- 
sities, like normal schools and training classes, are too 
often continuing to give a preparation better suited to 
the past than to the future. 

The rural and village high schools, generally speak- 
ing, need redirection almost as much as do the ele- 
mentary schools. Agriculture, manual work, and the 
home-keeping arts ought to be important elements in 
the training given in such schools, and the school needs 
good laboratory and land and barn equipment for its 
work. The usual rural or village high school is an old- 



A NEW TEACHER 301 

time city-type institution, copied by the village or 
rural district because it represents the traditional 
course of instruction and is cheap and easy to main- 
tain. If a teacher of the newer subjects is wanted, or 
one who can redirect the teaching of the old subjects, 
such teachers are hard to obtain, even though the 
salaries now offered for such teachers are comparable 
with the profits obtained from farming or from prac- 
tical work. The institutions engaged in the training of 
high-school teachers, alike with the institutions en- 
gaged in the training of elementary teachers, need to 
set to work seriously to prepare teachers who can go to 
our rural and village high schools and begin the redi- 
rection of the school and the improvement of rural and 
village life. 

The call for rural leadership. If our rural teachers 
are really to serve, if our rural schools are to be redi- 
rected and made vital, and if the school is to assume 
the position almost everywhere open to it and become 
the social center for the community life, a new type of 
leadership must be developed in our rural teachers. 
As Dean Bailey puts it, "A new race of country 
teachers needs to arise." The course of training just 
outlined has been worked out with this thought in 
mind. The need for rural leadership is great, and no 
one in the whole rural community has one half the 
opportunity for leadership and service that belongs, 
by the nature of the case, to the country teacher. The 
isolation and petty jealousies of rural communities are 



302 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

such that hardly any one is wilHng to try to start a 
new movement, and especially is this the case if it is 
a movement for the improvement of existing condi- 
tions. The heavy burden of denominationalism inter- 
feres with the effectiveness of the rural minister, the 
Grange leaders belong to an organization which does 
not include all citizens, while the rural social worker at 
best occupies but a limited field. Everywhere we find 
the public-school teacher, and the fact that she is a 
public official, supported by all and at the service of all, 
gives her an initial advantage such as no other com- 
munity agent does or can enjoy. The nearest approach 
would be the public librarian, but the opportunities of 
even such an officer are small compared with those of a 
teacher. 

Possibilities for usefulness. As an outside person, 
with a better perspective than that of the community 
residents, and as a teacher of the children of all, the 
teacher, if possessed of proper training and vision, has 
the opportunity gradually to enlarge her duties so as 
to include the social and the educational leadership of 
the whole community. If she has studied rural social, 
economic, and educational problems and needs; if she 
realizes the place and the importance of the home, 
the school, the church, the library, the Grange, the 
Y.M.C.A., and the Y.W.C.A., as social institutions; if 
she knows the importance of each of these in effecting 
general progress; — then it is possible for such a teacher 
to evolve into one of the most useful of rural social 



A NEW TEACHER 303 

workers. She must, however, have the vision to form 
a clear conception as to needed community advance- 
ment; have the practical judgment to know what to 
attempt, and what to postpone or to let alone; be 
patient enough not to expect to transform everything 
in a day or a year; and be possessed of that quality of 
leadership which stimulates others into action, and 
develops initiative and self-reliance in them, instead of 
trying to run everything personally and to magnify her 
own importance in the community. To give, in the 
training school, so far as it can be done, training for 
such rural leadership, is much more important than 
improving the teacher's knowledge of the subject- 
matter of arithmetic and grammar, or of filling her full 
of methods and devices for the teaching of such 
subjects. 

Personal attitude ; steps in the process. In addition 
to such training the teacher needs to be in sympathy 
with life in the open country. No town-bred and town- 
sick teacher can ever render the kind of service de- 
sired. She must really love the country, and feel that 
her call for service lies there. The possibilities and 
beauties of life in the open country must make a strong 
appeal to her. Accepting conditions as she finds them, 
she then begins to contribute her part to that gradual 
transformation and reconstruction of rural life which 
is necessary to adjust it to modern demands. From 
small beginnings large results will ultimately come. 
The first step is to make as good a school as is possible, 



304 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

and to make it permeate the life of the community. 
Another early progressive step is the improvement of 
the building and the grounds. From the school as a 
center, the teacher must gradually reach outward into 
the community life. School exhibitions, boys' and 
girls' clubs, contests of various kinds, community 
gatherings, parents' associations, joint institutes of the 
young people and the farmers, and cooperative com- 
munity undertakings for the improvement of the 
school or the community life, will come along natu- 
rally as the school develops from a little isolated insti- 
tution for the drilling-in of definite amounts of old 
traditional knowledge, into a larger community insti- 
tution devoted to the advancement of the community 
welfare. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What are average yearly wages for rural teachers in your state? 
In your county, or township? 

2. What percentage of the teachers are new to the work each year? 
Why is this so? 

3. Compare the yearly wages of teachers in consolidated schools 
with those in district schools. 

4. Why is it impossible, in most of our states, to equalize educational 
opportunities between city boy and country boy under present 
conditions? 

5. Why are good educational preparation and professional Insight 
of particular importance for teachers in our rural schools? 

6. Why is the county teachers' examination a poor test for such 
preparation? 

7. What percentage of the teachers in your state or county have 
had professional preparation for the work of teaching? What 
number do you suppose have a modern point of view in their 
work? 

8. Do you have high-school training classes in your state? 



A NEW TEACHER 305 

9. Are the courses of instruction offered in such "adequate," 
judged by the standards set up on pages 293-94? 

10. Do you have courses comparable to the one outUned on pages 
295-96? Do you think such would be an improvement on what 
the teacher now gets? 

11. Do you regard the course on pages 295-96 to be an improvement 
on the ones given on pages 292-93? In what particulars, and why? 

12. How can we "redirect" the high school along the lines sug- 
gested? 

13. What lines of attack in improving educational conditions in 
rural districts are most likely to be successful? 

14. In what ways does the country-school teacher have particular 
advantages for rural leadership? 

15. Read carefully the last five pages of this chapter, and then out- 
line a feasible plan for community improvement, and with the 
ultimate end in view of making your school a community center, 
large or small. 



CHAPTER XIII 

A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 

Larger rural leadership. When we pass from a con- 
sideration of the teaching to that of the supervision of 
instruction in our rural and village schools, the need 
for fundamental supervisory changes, if we are to 
accomplish large results, will be no less apparent. 
Perhaps no phase of the rural-school problem is more 
urgently in need of a radical reconstruction than is 
that phsLse that has to do with the supervision of the 
instruction in our rural and village schools. It is very 
desirable to stimulate the local leadership of teachers, 
as emphasized in the last chapter, but even more im- 
portant is the inspiration and leadership which comes 
from some one of larger authority and oversight. 
Unless there is an effective leader of leaders to stimu- 
late and to direct, rural educational progress is almost 
certain to prove sporadic and ineffective. In an army 
good drill sergeants and lieutenants are, of course, 
necessary, but an army would prove ineffective in 
action if there were no captains for the companies or 
colonels for the regiments. It is the lack of captains 
and colonels of larger grasp and insight that is to-day 
the greatest single weakness of our rural and village 
educational army. When matched against the city 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 307 

educational army, with its many captains and colo- 
nels, and under generals of large insight and effective 
personal force, the city army easily outgenerals its 
opponent. Still more, because of its superior organ- 
ization and superior generalship, its more attractive 
service, and the better pay and greater permanency of 
its educational positions, the city educational army is 
continually drawing off from the other not only its 
best olBBcers, but its best privates as well. The rural 
and village army can make but few reprisals, and hence 
is continually compelled to fill its ranks with raw 
recruits. The reason for this condition is partly finan- 
cial, due in part to poor educational organization, as 
we have previously pointed out in chapter viii, but 
partly due to the lack of good generalship in the rural 
and village army. 

Dropping the figure of speech, the lack of effective 
personal and professional supervision for our rural and 
town schools is to-day one of the most serious handi- 
caps under which they suffer. Lacking leadership 
which knows what ought to be done and how to do it, 
the rural and village schools too often merely drift 
along. Only in a few of the New England States, in 
New York, New Jersey, parts of Utah, and in a few 
Southern States, is anything approaching effective 
supervisory organization as yet to be found. 

The county unit in evolution. Everywhere outside of 
New England, and excepting only New York, Virginia, 
and Nevada, the county exists as a unit of school 



308 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

organization and administration, though the county 
as a unit is everywhere more or less further subdivided 
into townships, or school districts, or both. The 
county unit, also, is found in all stages of evolution 
from the strong-district and weak-county combination, 
such as exists in Missouri, up to the county as the 
single unit of educational organization and administra- 
tion, analogous to a city-school organization, as exists in 
Maryland. Between these two extremes we find states 
representing all stages in the evolutionary process, 
though the direction of the evolution seems somewhat 
clear. The county, outside of New England, and pos- 
sibly one or two other states, offers such a natural 
and ready-made unit for educational organization and 
administration, its use would offer so many financial 
and educational advantages, and the general tendency 
toward making the county the unit, generally speak- 
ing, seems so unmistakable, that we may, perhaps in 
the near future, look forward to seeing a system of 
school organization, administration, and supervision 
evolved which shall be as effective and efficient for 
rural and village schools as our forms of city educa- 
tional organization and administration are for city 
schools. In the mean time, we need an improvement in 
conditions to secure better results. 

The evolution of the school superintendency. As 
education began to evolve from a little, local, and 
voluntary community interest into a large, general, 
and compulsory state interest, and as the states began 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 309 

to be possessed of school funds of some actual or poten- 
tial size, our people began to create state and county 
educational officials to look after the larger interests of 
the state, as opposed to the smaller interests of the 
communities. State and county superintendents of 
schools were eventually created for nearly all of the 
states, and these officials were given power to appor- 
tion the income from the state school funds and the 
proceeds of taxation, and to compel, in return, the 
submission of certain statistical information which the 
state thought it worth while to collect. The state edu- 
cational officer looked after the financial and statistical 
matters for the state as a whole, and the county edu- 
cational officers acted, in large part, as his representa- 
tives, in the same capacity, in the different counties. 
Almost the only educational function given to such 
officials at first was that of visiting and stimulating 
an interest in the schools. As the office called for 
no special qualities, and could be filled from among 
the electorate more easily than could the position of 
county treasurer or auditor, there was at first no 
reason why election from and by the electorate, and 
for short terms, would not secure as satisfactory 
school officers as any other method. 

New conception of the office. Since those early days 
the whole face of the educational problem has changed, 
and the nature of the superintendent's duties and 
powers has changed as well. The clerical and financial 
functions remain, but greatly enlarged, and, in addi- 



310 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

tion, powers and functions formerly resting with the 
local district authorities on the one hand, and new 
educational functions since assumed by the state on 
the other, have been intrusted to this county educa- 
tional official. Many of these new powers and duties, 
such as the certification of teachers, the outlining of 
the course of study, the selection of school library 
and school textbooks, the construction and sanitation 
of school buildings, the examination and grading of the 
schools, and the supervision of the work of the teacher, 
call for professional preparation of a rather high order 
if efficient service is to be expected. 

As a result, within the past decade or two, entirely 
new conceptions of the office have been evolving, and 
entirely new educational demands have been pushed 
to the front. The idea that any citizen or teacher could 
fill the office has been passing, and states have begun 
to demand an examination and a special certificate as a 
prerequisite of holding the office. Still more recently 
our studies of the rural-life and the rural-educational 
problems have alike led to the conclusion that the 
educational system of a county should be placed under 
as efficient educational leadership as is that of a city. 

If the education of the country boy and girl is as 
important as the education of the city boy and girl, 
and if the country boy and girl are ever to secure 
approximately equal advantages, then country people 
must see to it that their schools are possessed of as 
good educational organization and leadership, for their 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 311 

needs, as are the schools of the cities. To secure such 
results for country boys and girls there must be pro- 
vided a better system of organization and maintenance 
than is now found in most of our states (chapter viii) ; 
a new type of teaching equipment must be provided 
(chapter ix) ; a reorganization and consolidation of 
the schools, according to some rational county plan, 
should be carried out (chapter x); a new course of 
instruction, ministering to the community needs, 
should be introduced (chapter xi); a new type of 
teacher, interested in the community welfare, should 
be trained and secured (chapter xii) ; and a new form 
of rural-school supervision, which shall be as good 
and as effective for rural and village schools as city- 
school supervision is to-day for city schools, should be 
created and maintained. 

Our present supervision. Of real educational super- 
vision for our rural schools, except in a few favored 
states, we have to-day almost none. The town super- 
vision required uniformly for all schools in Massa- 
chusetts, under which rural and town schools are alike 
supervised by the town-school superintendent, is 
perhaps as effective as any system of supervision we 
have. The township system as inaugurated here and 
there in Ohio, if properly established, often gives ex- 
cellent results. Depending, as it does, on voluntary 
establishment, and not being subject to other than 
nominal state or county oversight, it is more often 
ineffective than effective, and still more often not 



312 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 




Fig. 71. TOWNSHIP SUPERVISION IN OHIO 

This map shows what has been accomplished under the permissive law for super- 
vision by townships after nearly forty years of permission, and ten years of active 
urging. Real supervision can only be said to have been established in the town- 
ships marked " 1." More than half of the townships still have no supervision. 

established at all. This is well shown by the accom- 
panying map of Ohio, which shows the results of nearly 
forty years of voluntary effort in the provision of 
township supervision. The New York plan for the 
appointment of district superintendents, for divisions 
of a county small enough to enable the superintendent 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 313 

to reach the teachers, and with freedom given the 
appointing boards to go anywhere they desire to secure 
men or women for the office, is a plan which ought to 
secure fairly good results. The Maryland and the Utah 
systems, where the county constitutes one school dis- 
trict and the county is the unit, represent perhaps the 
best we have to-day in rural-school supervision. 

In most of our states, though, the supervision of 
our rural and town schools is clerical, statistical, and 
financial, rather than educational in type. These 
aspects of the work are often handled in a very satis- 
factory manner, but the educational supervision too 
often consists only of the yearly visit, for a few hours, 
of the county superintendent; perhaps a final written 
examination of the pupils, on uniform questions sent 
out from the superintendent's office; and unintelligent 
oversight by the district trustees. What the school is 
or is not, it is or is not almost entirely because of the 
character of the teacher in charge. Here and there 
a teacher of strength and large personal initiative 
teaches, for a year or two, a remarkably efficient 
school; the old stager and the beginner, on the other 
hand, usually maintain only a traditional old-type 
school. Either satisfies the letter of the law, because 
there is no professional oversight close enough to 
know what is going on or strong enough to compel 
improvement. The teacher is left to her own initiative; 
the district trustees set the standards; the school too 
frequently merely drifts along; and the more intelli- 



314 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

gent farmers move to town to secure better educa- 
tional advantages for their children. Given such a new 
type of teacher as has been described in the last chap- 
ter and she would probably soon be driven from the 
work by the lack of teaching equipment, the inaction 
of the district trustees, and the lack of effective sup- 
port from the county educational authorities. Under 
the present system progress is slow and hard to make, 
and in large part because there is at the top no educa- 
tional leadership, with power to act. Good teachers 
are worn out and leave for the city because the efforts 
they put forth secure such small results. 

The system to blame. There is little use to blame 
the county superintendent for this state of affairs, 
because he is not to blame. He is merely the product 
of a bad system: it is the system itself which is to 
blame. The chief count against the county superin- 
tendent is that he too often openly defends the system 
which hampers him, instead of aiding efforts to throw 
it off and secure one better adapted to modern needs. 
We need, in most of our states, materially to strengthen 
the authority of the county superintendent in dealing 
with the district boards of trustees; to open the way 
for securing superintendents of larger insight and 
broader knowledge; and to replace the present yearly 
visitation and examination by close personal and pro- 
fessional supervision, such as our cities to-day enjoy. 
To do this, some new legislation, as well as trained and 
efficient supervisors, will be necessary. 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 315 

Present conditions in the county office. In twenty- 
eight of the forty states having a county superintend- 
ent, he is elected by the people at popular elections. 
In eighteen of the twenty-eight states, he is elected for 
but two-year terms, and in two of these eighteen 
states, the county superintendent is actually made 
ineligible, by the state constitution, to serve more than 
four years in the oiBBce. In other words, the county 
superintendent of schools, a man who ought to enter 
the work only after careful study and training for it, 
as a life career, and with the idea of becoming an educa- 
tional leader, as does a city superintendent, is by the 
people regarded merely as a political officer and clerk, 
and the office is passed around among the electorate 
without regard to the effect of this action on the 
schools. The county superintendent must first become 
a resident of the county and a voter, must then work 
up in the party ranks and extend his acquaintanceship 
to secure a nomination, must win the primary and 
stump the county against an opponent, and pay his 
political assessments and campaign expenses, — all 
for a temporary and poorly-paid political job, and 
always with the risk of defeat staring him in the face. 
Every other year, in eighteen of our states, he must 
waste six months of his time and possible educational 
efficiency in such political work, and he must also keep 
his political eye open all the time in between. 

Why the cities draw the best. It is not surprising 
that the office of county superintendent does not 



816 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

attract the best men and women in the teaching pro- 
fession. The low salary paid, the expense of securing 
the office, the public notoriety, the humiliation of 
defeat, the short tenure of office, the high protective 
tariff levied against men and women of training from 
the outside by the local-residence requirement, and 
the inability to accomplish much when he has the 
district system to deal with, all alike tend to keep the 
best men out of the office. The position of county 
superintendent of schools is one of much potential 
importance, and is capable of being transformed into 
one which will render great service to the people; but in 
most of our states to-day it remains, to a high degree, a 
highly-protected local industry, offering but temporary 
employment to the few who are willing to consider 
political candidacy, and realizing but a small fraction 
of the possible service and efficiency for which the 
people pay. 

Unlike the city superintendency, the office of county 
superintendent offers no career to any one. Too often 
good men go down to defeat at the hands of the people 
because of having rendered honest and efficient service, 
or are made the victims of a shrewd canvass by an 
opponent among an unthinking electorate. In city- 
school work we should regard it as highly unprofes- 
sional for a man to open a campaign to secure the city 
superintendent's job when the board of education had 
expressed no dissatisfaction with him, but in county 
supervision this is regarded as the proper method of 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 317 

procedure. The political method of nomination and 
election seldom brings the best-prepared men to the 
front; the real merit of a man for the office has little to 
do with either his salary or his retention in the office; 
and the inevitable result is that the best-educated and 
best-trained of our school men, whose services the 
counties ought to be bidding for to secure them as 
their leaders, refuse to have anything to do with the 
office. The blighting influence of party politics in the 
county and the personal politics and jealousies in the 
districts alike combine to lay a heavy hand on rural 
educational progress. Under the circumstances, it is 
not to be wondered at that the chief educational 
progress of the last quarter of a century has been 
made by the cities, and that the rural-school problem 
remains with us. 

Where the fault lies. The fault lies, as has been said 
before, not so much with the county superintendents 
themselves as with the system which produces them. 
It is the system itself which is wrong, and no one feels 
this more than the efficient county superintendent who 
to-day tries to make educational progress. On all sides 
he is cramped and hampered, and most so in the states 
where the district system is strong. Say what we may 
for the present system and the fact still remains that 
the office of county superintendent of schools to-day is 
but a temporary and poorly-paid job, offering no in- 
centive to any one to prepare for it. If a man to-day 
desires to become a city-school principal, and rise to be 



818 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

a city superintendent, he first goes to a normal school 
or university and prepares himself for the work by 
years of careful study of^ educational theory and admin- 
istration, and he then expects to be able to enter the 
work without reference to residence or politics, and to 
rise in it on the basis of his energy and capacity. Al- 
most nowhere in county supervision, outside of a few 
Southern States and the States of New York, New 
Jersey, and Utah, can a man either enter the work or 
retain his place in it, solely on the basis of merit. If, on 
the other hand, the office were taken entirely out of 
politics; made an appointive instead of an elective 
ofiice; thrown open to general competition, as high- 
school principalships and city superintendencies have 
been; and with salary, tenure, and promotion based 
on competency and efficient service; — the oJBSce of 
county superintendent could soon be made one of great 
importance, and would offer a career for which a man 
or woman would be warranted in making long and 
careful preparation. 

Stock arguments. The stock argument that the 
present plan is thoroughly democratic and educates 
the people is one that has no merit in it. The cities 
are not undemocratic because they appoint their city 
superintendents instead of electing them, nor are the 
high-school districts because they do not have the 
people nominate and vote for two local residents every 
time they need a new high-school principal. The argu- 
ment that the people are educated by using the ballot. 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 319 

which is another stock argument, is exceedingly fal- 
lacious when applied to the election of what ought to 
be so distinctly an expert officer as a county super- 
intendent of schools. In the present days of prima- 
ries, initiatives, and referendums, there are plenty of 
chances for such education by means of the ballot 
without exercising it to the injury of the school system. 
Moreover, the education of the people comes from 
voting on public issues, and not in deciding between 
men who are to do work of a highly expert and profes- 
sional type. The personal and professional qualities 
demanded for the office of county superintendent of 
schools are such that the people, as a mass, are not 
competent to decide between candidates, and in the 
interests of the education of their children they ought 
not to be permitted to do so. It would be just as sen- 
sible to nominate and elect, by popular vote, a county 
health-officer, a county entomologist, or a county 
horticulturist, and the results would be about as satis- 
factory. 

The way out. To put our rural and village schools on 
a proper basis, to provide the kind of instruction and 
supervision children in such schools ought to enjoy, 
and to eliminate the rural-school problem, we need to 
eliminate both personal and party politics from the 
management of these schools, and to put them, so far 
as management is concerned, on the same basis as our 
better-organized city-school systems. This demands 
the subordination of the district system, the reorgani- 



320 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

zation and consolidation of the schools, the erection of 
the county as the unit for school administration, and 
the complete elimination of party politics from the 
management of the schools. Never before in the his- 
tory of our educational systems has there been such 
urgent need for men of adequate educational prepara- 
tion, deep social and professional insight, and large 
executive skill and personal power for the supervision 
of rural education; and such men, once selected and 
appointed, need to be given the same tenure, compen- 
sation, and free hand which a superintendent of schools 
in a well-organized city-school system has to-day. 
Long ago our cities abolished their districts, stopped 
electing their superintendents by popular vote, and 
began to manage their cities as a unit; and not until 
our counties introduce something of the same unit 
system into their educational management can rural 
education be put on a competitive basis with city 
education. For the pleasure of electing a horde of 
unnecessary trustees and of voting for another county 
officer, the people have as a consequence an unneces- 
sary number of small, costly, and inefficient rural 
schools, poorer teachers than is necessary, inadequate 
and often unsuitable instruction, and supervision that 
is little more than a name. 

What democracy should mean. Democracy ought 
to mean good government and efficient administration, 
— the best and the most efficient that the taxes we pay 
can secure. This, however, does not of necessity mean 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 321 

that the people should vote for all, or even for any- 
large number, of those who are to secure such govern- 
ment for them. With the coming of the short ballot 
in county government, as it has come in city govern- 
ment, one of the first offices which ought to be removed 
from the political column is that of county superin- 
tendent of schools. Rural-school administration and 
supervision, if it is to be properly done, is a piece of 
expert professional work, for which a superintendent 
ought to prepare himself with care, and one which 
ought to be placed on as high a professional plane as is 
the supervision of our city schools. When this has been 
done, the reorganization of rural education, with cen- 
trally located rural schools, instruction suited to the 
needs of country children, and supervision as close 
and effective as the cities to-day enjoy, will be easy of 
accomplishment. Then only will farmers cease moving 
to the city to secure better educational advantages for 
their children.^ 

A reorganized county system. Utah and Maryland 
offer us excellent examples of a good system of county 
school organization; and the plans followed by some 
other states, as, for example, the supervisory system of 
Massachusetts, or the Minnesota scheme for the reor- 
ganization and consolidation of districts (chapter x), 
possess some commendable features. The essentials 

^ Of 1100 cases of removal from country to city personally in- 
vestigated recently by T. J. Coates, supervisor of rural schools in 
Kentucky, more than 1000 were caused by a desire for better school, 
church, and social advantages. 



322 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

are a small county board of education, say of five, only 
a part of whom go out of office at any one time, and 
consisting of laymen elected by the people, preferably 
at a time distinct from the general political election. 
This body constitutes a county board of education, 
analogous to a city board of education. This board 
then elects the county superintendent of schools, and 
such assistant superintendents or special supervisors 
as are necessary, or as may be required by law, and 
fixes the compensation for each. In making such selec- 
tions they should be free to go anywhere in the United 
States for the man or woman for the position. The 
county board also appoints a secretary, with such cleri- 
cal assistance as is needed. The secretary and his as- 
sistants then attend to all clerical and business func- 
tions, leaving the superintendent and his assistants 
free to attend to the supervision of the instruction in 
the schools. 

>The county board. The county board, with the 
assistance of its executive officers, then manages as a 
unit the schools of the county, outside of cities under 
city superintendents; manages all strictly county 
schools, such as county agricultural high schools and 
county training schools; purchases and distributes all 
school supplies; levies the county school taxes; and 
pays out all school funds. One very important func- 
tion of such a board, acting in conjunction with its 
executive officers, is that of abolishing the present 
unnecessary districts and reorganizing the educational 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 823 

system of the county according to some rational plan, 
and with a view to providing all children in the rural 
and village districts with a system of rural education 
comparable in efficiency with that provided by the 
better city-school systems for their children. This 
involves the establishment of a number of strong cen- 
tralized schools, often with partial or complete high 
schools attached. 

The Utah and Maryland plans are fundamental, 
because they go to the root of the rural-school problem. 
The subordination of the district system, the elimina- 
tion of personal and party politics from the manage- 
ment of the schools, and the reorganization of rural 
education along good business and professional lines 
are absolutely necessary prerequisites to any solution 
of the problem of giving the rural boy and girl educa- 
tional advantages comparable to those now enjoyed by 
city children. 

The plan applied. Applying this plan to the sug- 
gested reorganization of Douglas County, Minnesota, 
as shown in Figs. 63 and 64, pp. 246 and 247, the fol- 
lowing results would be obtained. Instead of the peo- 
ple electing one county superintendent of schools from 
among their own number, and at the low salary fixed 
by law, the people would then elect a county board of 
education of five citizens, who, in turn, would appoint 
a county superintendent of schools to serve as an edu- 
cational expert, and a secretary to manage the clerical 
and business affairs of the county office. In making 



324 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

these selections, the county board would be as free to 
go outside of the county, or outside of the state if it 
seemed wise to do so, as city boards of education are 
now free to look elsewhere for a city superintendent of 
schools or a grammar or high-school principal. They 
ought also to be free to fix the salary of each person so 
employed. What is wanted is the best person which 
the money a county can afford to pay will secure. 
On the recommendation of the superintendent the 
county board would also appoint such assistant super- 
intendents, primary supervisors, and supervisors of 
special instruction — drawing, music, agriculture, 
manual work — as the best interests of the schools of 
the county seemed to demand. 

The three independent town-school systems and the 
ninety-eight district schools, as shown in Fig. 63, 
would be consolidated into twenty -four districts, fol- 
lowing natural community lines, as shown in Fig. 64; 
twenty-two of the twenty-four consolidated schools 
would contain a graded school and would offer two 
years of high-school instruction, while the other two, 
due to their small number of children, would be able to 
provide only a graded school. Full four-year courses 
would be maintained in each of the towns. Should the 
educational needs of the county seem to require it, a 
county agricultural high school could be developed at 
some central point, from one of the two-year high 
schools. A county teachers' training school, a county 
parental school, or other special-type schools could 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 325 

also be developed, if the population and educational 
needs of the county seemed to warrant it. 

The gain in supervision. The greatest gain from 
such a reorganization would come from the centralized 
professional leadership, the close supervision, and the 
business organization which would be provided for the 
schools. Under such a plan a system of county schools, 
organized along the lines of the best city-school admin- 
istrative experience, could be perfected for the county 
as well as for the city. It would then be the business 
of the county board of education to select the most 
capable leader obtainable, pay him a salary commen- 
surate with his worth and the importance of the posi- 
tion, give him needed assistance to insure helpful per- 
sonal supervision, and then expect him to develop the 
best system of rural and village schools throughout the 
county which the money at hand would secure. Uni- 
form terms and uniform tax rates would naturally 
follow, and a uniformly high standard of rural and 
village education would soon come to prevail every- 
where throughout the county. The schools of the 
whole county would then be managed much as are the 
schools of a city-school system to-day. A New Eng- 
land town presents the same idea, on a smaller scale. 
A city-school system of twenty -four school buildings, 
located in different parts of the city and under one 
city superintendent and one city board of education, 
is entirely analogous to a county-school system of 
twenty-four consolidated schools, under one county 



326 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

superintendent and one county board of education. 
The difference is one of distance, and not of principle; 
and a telephone in each school, connected with the 
county office, and an automobile for the county super- 
intendent would largely eliminate this. If farmers can 
afford such conveniences for a county agricultural ad- 
viser, it ought also to be possible to afford them for a 
county educational adviser and his assistants. All that 
is required is the exercise of a little imagination and the 
expenditure of a little more money to perfect as good 
schools for the country as are now to be had in the 
cities. That such a form of school organization is not 
imaginary or impossible may be seen from the descrip- 
tion of the schools of Baltimore County, Maryland, 
given in the following chapter. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Classify the clerical, financial, and educational functions of a 
county superintendent of schools, 

2. Distinguish between statistical, clerical, and financial super- 
vision of schools on the one hand, and educational supervision 
on the other, 

3. If your county superintendent spent half a day visiting each 
teacher in your county not under a supervising principal or a 
city superintendent of schools, and spent four days each week in 
visiting, how many visits could he make to each teacher each 
school year? 

4. Is the supervision as you know it supervision, or inspection? 
Why? 

5. What new lines of educational activity could a county superin- 
tendent of schools in your county engage in, to the great advan- 
tage of the schools? 

6. Would the county system, in your judgment, be a good thing if 
applied to your state? 



A NEW TYPE OF SUPERVISION 327 

7. .What has been the average tenure of office of the county 
superintendent in your county? 

8. To what extent is the county the unit for other public affairs 
in your state? 

9. Work out a good plan for a county system of school administra- 
tion to fit the needs of the schools of your county. 

10. Do you see anything impractical in the Minnesota county- 
unit plan as applied on pages 323-25? 

11. Apply the present district system of organization and control 
to a city of 100 teachers, and what would be the result? 

12. Read the third part of the following chapter, describing a 
county-unit school system, and see if it does not give you new 
ideas as to the possibilities of county-school supervision. 



CHAPTER XIV 

NOTEWORTHY EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 

This chapter, like chapter vi, is intended to be 
merely descriptive of a few noteworthy examples of 
rural educational effort of the kind the preceding pages 
have tried to outline as desirable. It is not claimed 
that the examples described are the best of their class, 
but only that they are typical, and that they illustrate 
well what may be done along the line of redirecting 
and revitalizing our rural schools. 

A ONE-ROOM RURAL SCHOOL 

The rural school building shown in the plate oppo- 
site this page was erected on the campus of the State 
Normal School at Kirksville, Missouri, on the estab- 
lishment of the ungraded school there, in 1907. The 
children come chiefly from two different and adjacent 
rural school districts, and are transported to and fro 
each day in the transportation wagons, as shown in the 
picture. The school owns the wagons, and contracts 
with farmers to furnish horses and driver and to haul 
the children. The school is in charge of a regular 
teacher, and pupils from the normal school go to it for 
observation and practice. 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 329 

The building represents what can be done, at no 
great expense, to provide a building with modern con- 
veniences for the distinctly rural school. In such a 
building a redirected school, such as is described in 
chapter xi, is easily possible. The basement, ground 
floor, and attic are all equipped and put to use, as may 
be seen from the floor plans here reproduced. This 
building, with full equipment, could probably be du- 
plicated to-day in most communities for not to exceed 
$2500, and in many communities for less. The building 
has been copied, in more or less modified form, by 
school authorities in Missouri and Iowa, and, where 
one-room schools must be maintained, represents a 
desirable type of rural building.^ 

Basement. This is twenty -eight by thirty-six feet 
in size, with a clear head room of eight feet. The floor 
is of concrete, underlaid with porous tile and cinders. 
The tile leads into a sewer. The walls are of concrete 
also, protected from undue moisture by an outside tile, 
running around the building, also leading into the 
sewer. The space above the tile is filled with cinders. 
The outside entrance to the basement is also of con- 
crete, with a sewer drain through the lower step. 

The basement has eight compartments: (l) A 
furnace-room, containing a hot-air furnace, inclosed by 
galvanized iron; a double cold-air duct, with an electric 
fan; and a gas water-heater. (2) A coal-bin, six by 
eight feet in size. (S) A bulb or plant room, three 
1 See aisc Fig. 51, p. 231, for another model rural school building. 



330 



KURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



by eight feet, for fall, winter, and spring storage of 
materials. (4) A dark room, four by eight feet, for 
children's experiments in photography. (5) A laundry- 




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COLD AIR OUCT - 
WATER TANK 
400,CAL 





BULB ROOM 



^iLAUNORY 

_ /Fixtures 



DRYING ROOM 



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SWITCH BOARD ^^ 
GASOLINE CNOINE 

MAIN PUMP 



Qgasmuer ovnamI 

QwartR COOLER 



N Ml 



GYMNASIUM I2KX23 



BASEMENT PLAN 

Fio. 72. BASEMENT PLAN OF MODEL RURAL SCHOOL 

room, five by twenty -one feet, for teaching laundering, 
with tubs, drain, and drying apparatus. (6) A gym- 
nasium, thirteen by twenty-three feet, for indoor 
games, in stormy weather. (7) A tank-room, contain- 
ing a four-hundred-gallon pneumatic pressure-tank, 
storage-batterj^ for electricity, hand-pump for emer- 
gencies, sewer-pipe, floor-drain, etc. (s) An engine- 
room, containing a gasoline engine, water-pump, 
electrical generator, switchboard, water-tank for cool- 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 331 

ing the gasoline engine, weight for gas pressure, gas 
mixer, batteries, pipes, wires, etc. 

The pumps lift water from a well into the pressure- 
tank, through pipes below the frost line. Gasoline is 
admitted, through pipes below the frost line, from two 
forty-gallon underground tanks, placed thirty feet 
from the building. The basement, first floor, and attic 
are wired for electric lights, so that the building may be 
used in the evening for neighborhood purposes. The 
gasoline engine, furnace, and other appliances can be 
managed by the boys, as such machinery is not differ- 
ent from what they will use later on the farm. 

First-floor plan. The schoolroom is twenty-two by 
twenty-seven feet in the clear. The children face the 
east, and the light comes in from the north. A ground- 
glass window at the rear admits sunlight, for sanitary 
reasons. The schoolroom has adjustable seats and 
desks, teacher's desks, and telephone. An alcove or 
closet is on the east side for books, teacher's wraps, etc. 
At the back of the room is a stereopticon, with a 
screen at the front. The school has an organ, book- 
cases, shelves, and teaching apparatus. Pure air 
enters above the children's heads from the furnace, 
and passes out at the floor through the open fireplace. 
Both boys and girls have separate toilet-rooms 
within the building, containing a washbowl with hot 
and cold water, toilet, and shower, as well as mirrors, 
towel-racks, and separate water-heaters. The walls 
between the toilet-rooms are deadened, and each is 



332 



RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 



reached from separate cloak- and hat-rooms. Girls 
may enter the building and reach the girls' toilet-room 
by a side entrance, and without passing through the 




FtRST-FLOOR PLAM 

FiQ. 73. FIRST-FLOOR PLAN OF MODEL RURAL SCHOOL 



schoolroom. A drinking-fountain on this floor would 
be a desirable addition, and could easily be supplied 
from the pressure-tank. Stairs lead both to the attic 
and to the basement. 

Attic plan. This is thirty-five by fifteen feet in size, 
and seven and one half feet to the ceiling, in the middle 
of the building. While an attic is a common feature in 
schoolhouses, this is one of the few to be put to use. 
Still more attic room could have been secured if the 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 333 

roof had been humped out (gambrel roof) instead of 
being doubled in on the sides. The attic is furnished 
with gas for cooking and with electricity for lighting. 
It has a gasoline stove; a large sink, such as a good 






M:4: 



CASOLINC 



SANITABV 
ORINKINC- 
rOUNTAIN 



o. 



"^WASM BOWL 



_48"X20*' 
SKY LIGHT 



li 



ATTIC PLAN 

Fig. 74. ATTIC PLAN OF MODEL RURAL SCHOOL 



kitchen usually contains; cupboards, boxes, and 
receptacles, for experiments in home economics; wash- 
bowl, drinking-fountain, and table. It also contains 
two manual-training benches for work in wood; a 
disinfecting apparatus, and a portable chemistry- 
agriculture laboratory; and numerous other equip- 
ments for experimental work. Besides the end win- 
dows, four skylights, one by eight feet in size, provide 
additional light. The room is heated by hot air from 



334 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

the furnace. It also has a disappearing bed, which 
shdes into the wall under the roof, for the use of the 
person who acts as janitor, as well as a mirror, wash- 
bowl, and towel-rack. 

A CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL 

The consolidated school illustrated and described 
here is the Harlem Consolidated School, located in 
Winnebago County, Illinois. The consolidated district 
was formed in 1910, by the union of four rural districts, 
and the school building was completed in March, 1911, 
at a cost of $17,700. The consolidated district com- 
prises eighteen sections (one half a township) of land, 
but lies in four different townships. This illustrates 
how a rural social community may bear little or no 
relation to township organization. 

The assessed valuation of the four rural districts 
uniting, in 1909, was $71,419, $68,206, $72,114, and 
$142,666 respectively; or a total assessed valuation of 
$354,405 for the consolidated district. Bonds for 
$17,700 were issued; bearing five per cent interest and 
payable in fifteen annual payments, the first payment 
to be made five years after their date. It was estimated 
that in five years the assessed valuation of the district 
would so increase, largely because of the new consoli- 
dated school, that the tax for paying the bonds would 
be relatively light. In 1910, the first year of the con- 
solidation, the valuation increased from $354,405 to 
$383,797; in 1911, to $487,365; and in 1912 to $489,266. 










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The Attic Gymnasium. 




The Grammar-Grade Classroom. 
THE HARLEM CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL, II 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 335 

The year before consolidation the four districts 
levied a total of $1600 in school taxes, or an average of 
$400 per district, for all purposes. The first levy (1910) 
for the consolidated district was for $3500; the second 
(1911) was for $4500; and the third (1912) was for 
$5500. The rate of tax in 1911 was the same, however, 
as in 1910, due to the increase in valuations. The rate 
of tax levied in 1912 was only seventy-five per cent of 
the amount allowed by law, and but 70 per cent of that 
levied for city schools at the county-seat town of 
Rockford. In 1909 no high-school facilities were pro- 
vided by any of the districts, while the new consoli- 
dated district now offers a four-year high-school 
course; employs five teachers instead of four; and pro- 
vides a nine-months' school term for all children in the 
four original districts. The chief reasons for the in- 
crease of tax were that the districts before had done so 
little; that the new school paid larger salaries than 
formerly; provided more teachers than before consoli- 
dation; added four years to the course of instruction, 
and lengthened the term; and that the area consolidat- 
ing (half a township) is small. An area one half larger 
would have afforded more pupils, reduced the per 
capita cost, and reduced the tax rate one third. A 
trolley line runs through the consolidated district, and 
a special five-cent fare is granted the pupils from any 
part of it. 

The plates which accompany this description show 
something of the nature of the school and its work. 



336 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

The first plate shows the building and the pupils. 
The building consists of a high basement, first floor, 
and attic. The picture also shows the organized play 
which is a feature of the school, the track team being at 
the right, and the girls' basketball team at the left. On 
the opposite side of the building is the school garden, 
for outdoor work in agriculture. The drawing oppo- 
site shows the grounds, and the way they have been 
laid off into playgrounds, school gardens, and lawns. 
The figures around the border of the grounds refer to 
a planting plan prepared by the department of horti- 
culture of the College of Agriculture of the University 
of Illinois. 

The upper half of the next plate shows the attic 
gymnasium, though it is the intention to fit this 
room up eventually as an assembly hall. The lower 
half of the same plate shows one of the classrooms, 
fitted with steel seats, lights, etc. In the next plate 
the domestic science laboratory and the school band 
are shown; and in the plate following this the man- 
ual-training room and the agricultural laboratory. 
The building is heated by a hot-air furnace, and is 
equipped with a gasoline power-engine, running water, 
drinking-fountains, toilet-rooms, etc. 

Here in the open country is a school of 101 pupils, 
organized into primary school, grammar school, and 
high school, and offering a rich course of instruction 
adapted to rural needs. Between it and the four little 
rural schools it has supplanted there is almost no com- 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 337 




Fio. 75. THE HARLEM CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL 
GROUNDS, WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILL. 



338 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

parison. The present school is an object of much com- 
munity pride; the former schools were objects of com- 
munity neglect. Nature study, drawing, handwork, 
and physical training are given in the grades; agricul- 
ture and manual training in the seventh and eighth 
grades; sewing in the eighth grade; and agriculture, 
manual training, sewing, domestic science, and com- 
mercial studies, as well as mathematics, history, Eng- 
lish, and science, in the high school. Practically one 
fifth of the enrollment in the consolidated school in 
1912 was of children over fourteen years of age, 
whereas before consolidation there were practically 
no children over that age in any of the rural schools 
uniting to form the consolidated school. Instead of 
four little schools, enrolling from eighteen to twenty 
pupils each, with one teacher, and little or no school 
spirit, there is now a consolidated school enrolling one 
hundred and one pupils and possessed of a spirit 
which is of the first importance in the education of 
children. It has cost more money, to be sure, though 
largely because the districts before consolidation did so 
little, but the increased returns have justified the larger 
expenditure. The county superintendent, in speak- 
ing of this school says: " Better country schools will 
come when more money is expended in a better way. 
There is no other way." This school certainly repre- 
sents the better way. 




The Domestic Science Laboratory. 




The School Band. 
THE HARLEM CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL, III 




The Manual-Training Room. 



mf/ 




•111 



The Agricultural Laboratory. 
THE HARLEM CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL, IV 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 339 

A COUNTY-UNIT SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Baltimore County, Maryland, is an excellent exam- 
ple of the county unit of school organization and ad- 
ministration, and also serves as an excellent example of 
what can be accomplished in the improvement of rural 
education, with goo(J leadership and by patient effort, 
and under proper educational conditions. The story is 
so interesting and so illustrative of possibilities that 
it is reproduced here. 

Baltimore County, Maryland, has an area of 630 
square miles (approximately 25 miles square), and is 
entirely separate and distinct from the city of Balti- 
more. There are in the county, in round numbers, 50 
one-teacher rural schools, 50 two-teacher rural and 
village schools, and 45 schools having from 3 to 49 
teachers. The largest schools are near the city of Balti- 
more. A number of the schools having 3 or more 
teachers are consolidated schools, located in the vil- 
lages and rural communities. The county school- 
system thus consists of 145 buildings, spread over an 
area of 630 square miles, and with something over 400 
teachers employed; as compared with 105 buildings 
and about 1800 teachers for the city of Baltimore, and 
condensed within an area of 30 square miles. In Mary- 
land the county, and not the township or the district, 
is the unit of educational organization and adminis- 
tration. For each county a board of county school 
commissioners (county board of education) is ap- 



340 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

pointed. These county boards consist of either three or 
six persons, appointed for six-year terms, one third 
going out of office every two years. In Baltimore 
County the board consists of six members, and is 
composed of farmers, merchants, and other men of 
affairs. 

Each board of county school commissioners prac- 
tically has entire control of the school affairs of the 
county, with the one exception that county school 
taxes, above a certain legal maximum, must first be 
approved by the county governmental authorities. 
The expenditure of all school moneys is in the hands of 
the board of school commissioners, and funds are ap- 
portioned as the needs of the dift'erent schools of the 
county require, and without regard to the taxable 
wealth of the different communities. This results in an 
equalization of both the burdens and the advantages 
of education, over the whole county, just as they are 
to-day equalized over a whole city. In other words, 
equally good schools, equally long terms, and equally 
good salaries are provided for all the schools of the 
county, and without reference to the taxpaying power 
of the different communities. 

District boards of school trustees exist in each dis- 
trict, but these are appointed by the board of school 
commissioners each year. A district board is allowed, 
on approval by the county board, to select the princi- 
pal for its school, and he may, in turn, nominate all 
assistant teachers in the school to the county board for 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 341 

appointment. He also acts as secretary of the district 
board. The functions of these district boards are con- 
fined to the above; to the care and repair of school- 
houses and furniture; to the supervising of the repair 
of the schoolhouse, when directed to do so by the 
county board; to the levying of district taxation, for 
additional educational facilities; and they may also 
admit, suspend, and expel pupils, and exercise limited 
local supervision over the schools. With the details of 
the work of instruction they have little or nothing to 
do, as the outlining of the course of study, the selection 
of textbooks and apparatus, and the supervision of 
instruction are strictly educational functions which 
rest with the county board of school commissioners 
and its appointed educational officers. 

The development of a good supervisory system in 
Baltimore County has been a matter of growth, and 
forms an interesting story of rural effort. It is unusual 
chiefly because the political conditions in most of our 
states will not permit of such progress being made. 

In 1900 the supervisory force consisted of a county 
superintendent and one assistant, who together at- 
tended to all the clerical, statistical, and financial 
work of a large county office, and also tried to super- 
vise the schools of the county. Together the two offi- 
cials were never able to visit each school in the county 
more than twice each year, and even to make such 
rounds required one hundred days (five school months) 
of continuous visiting from each. The principals in all 



342 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

of the schools of the county were also teaching princi- 
pals, with no free time for supervision, so that the 
schools of the county were practically without super- 
vision. 

About this time the board selected and appointed a 
new county superintendent, a recent college graduate, 
who had studied educational administration, and he 
set about the education of his board and the improve- 
ment of the educational conditions of his county. In 
1902 the county board was induced to employ a clerk 
and stenographer for the office, so as to give the super- 
intendent and his assistant more time, free from office 
work, for the supervision of the schools. Members of 
the county board were induced to accompany them, 
and see for themselves the needs of the schools. In 
1901 the county superintendent organized local insti- 
tutes, or teachers' meetings, in all parts of the countj^ 
and soon the principals of the larger schools were made 
the leaders of these local institutes. The superin- 
tendent then organized a *' Monthly Saturday Round- 
Table for Principals and Leaders of the Teachers* 
Meetings." Parents' meetings were also organized, 
and civic associations were addressed by the superin- 
tendent and teachers, on the work of the schools. This 
was all done as part of a quiet but persistent campaign 
of education, first of the teachers and then of the peo- 
ple, with a view to securing support for a movement for 
better schools, better educational conditions, and bet- 
ter salaries. To a selected list of four thousand citizens, 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 343 

equal to one fifth of the patrons of each school, annual 
reports, reprints of addresses, programs of work, etc., 
were mailed. The board itself soon became responsive 
to popular sentiment, began to talk of improvement, 
began to lay its plans before the people, and began to 
show a disposition to meet their wishes for better 
schools. Progress, though slow, soon became cumula- 
tive and sure. 

Additions to the work now began to be made. 
Domestic science was introduced, at first in a few local- 
ities, and by means of a half-time teacher. Soon the 
women's clubs of other communities asked for an ex- 
tension of the work, and this was done. The work is 
now in charge of a special supervisor, assisted by seven 
special teachers of domestic science. In all except the 
one-teacher schools, home economics has now been 
provided for all girls in the sixth, seventh, and eighth 
grades, and is continued through the four-year courses 
of five of the high schools of the county. In addition, 
about sixty grade teachers also teach sewing in the 
fifth and sixth grades of the schools. Rural domestic 
science clubs have been begun, largely as an out- 
growth of this instruction. Manual training was begun 
in a similar way, and with a similar result. Now a 
special supervisor of manual training, assisted by six 
special teachers, travels from school to school on a 
weekly schedule, and gives instruction to the boys in 
that subject. 

Farmers' clubs and Granges began to urge the board 



344 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

to improve the schools. The consoHdation of schools 
soon began to attract attention, and a number of 
consolidated schools have been formed. The farmers 
began to ask for an agricultural high school for the 
county, and in 1909 this was established. The wonder- 
ful work of this high school, which has profoundly 
influenced the agricultural and educational work and 
the social life of the whole county, has been described 
by the principal of the school in a recent magazine 
article.^ A demand for better school buildings — 
better-heated, ventilated, and adapted to modern 
educational needs — came as a natural outgrowth of 
the campaign of education. 

The need for better supervision for the schools was 
also kept before the board, largely by illustrations 
from the business world. Instead of freeing the prin- 
cipal from teaching duties, the plan decided upon was 
rather to use the county as a unit and to strengthen the 
county supervisory force. In 1905 an expert in pri- 
mary work was appointed as supervisor of primary 
grades for the county. Grade-teachers' meetings, 
twice each month, were then instituted for the first- 
and second-grade teachers. The primary supervisor 
also began to visit the primary classrooms once every 
ten days, and to hold personal conferences with the 
teachers as to their work. The next year the third- and 
fourth-grade teachers were included. The chief pur- 

1 The WorliTs Work, January, 1912: "A Very Real Country 
School," by B. H. Crocherton. 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 345 

poses of the teachers' meetings were to outhne and 
discuss the work to be done, to give the teachers defi- 
nite aid, and to create a stronger professional spirit 
among them. The board, during this second year, 
appointed one of the best primary teachers in the 
county as a substitute teacher, it being her chief work 
to visit and help teachers in their classrooms, and to 
relieve them for a day or two at a time while they 
visited schools, with or under the direction of the 
superintendent or supervisor. 

By 1908 the county board of education had become so 
impressed with the good results that they appointed a 
grammar-grade supervisor, who, in turn, began a sim- 
ilar work of organization and direction, beginning first 
with the fifth-grade teachers, and gradually extending 
the work to the upper grades. The work had grown to 
such importance by 1911 that the board authorized 
each special supervisor to select an assistant, of her 
own choosing, to help in the work of grade supervision. 
The special supervisors were also given the help of a 
stenographer. 

In 1910 the board authorized the superintendent to 
hold an all-day meeting, five times a year, of all teach- 
ers teaching in the one-room rural schools; and, in 
1911, meetings for all teachers in the two-room rural 
schools were also authorized. These meetings were 
helpful in evolving plans, and led naturally, in 1912, to 
the appointment, by the county board, of a special 
supervisor of rural schools for the county. The man 



346 RURAL LIFE AND EDUCATION 

selected had been a rural teacher in the countj^ had 
risen to the principalship of one of the larger schools, 
and then had gone to a teachers' college and had pre- 
pared himself well for the work to be done. Beginning 
with September, 1912, the teachers of the county were 
organized into thirteen supervisory groups, of not over 
thirty-five teachers to a group, with eleven of the 
thirteen groups in charge of a grade supervisor or as- 
sistant, who visits and aids the teachers of that group. 
The other two groups are in charge of assistant super- 
intendents. The county superintendent oversees and 
directs the work of all, and visits each teacher once 
each year. 

This, in brief, is the story of thirteen years of educa- 
tional effort at the improvement of the schools of a 
county. The results have been such as to give the 
people of Baltimore County, Maryland, one of the best 
organized rural-school systems to be found in the 
United States. Aside from the slow but gradual educa- 
tion of the people of the county to appreciate the need 
for better supervision and to demand that more money 
be spent on the schools, the excellent results which 
have been attained there have been due largely to five 
things : — 

1. The county board of school commissioners has 

'been a continuing body of citizens, only one third 

going out of office at one time, and has thus been 

able to plan and to execute a continuing educational 

policy. 



EXAMPLES IN RURAL EDUCATION 347 

2. The county board was free to go anywhere it 
wished to secure the kind of man it desired for county 
superintendent, to appoint him, and to fix his salary. 

3. The county board has been free to retain his 
services continuously, without the interference of 
party politics or the chances of a biennial political 
election. Efficiency, not politics, has been the basis of 
his retention in office. 

4. The county board has also been free to appoint 
assistant superintendents, special supervisors, assist- 
ant supervisors, stenographers, and clerks, as they 
deemed necessary, and to fix their salaries, and without 
having first to ask the county board of supervisors or 
the legislature for permission to do so. They have been 
free, as such boards ought to be, to make progress as 
fast as they thought desirable, instead of being tied, 
hand and foot, by uniform laws. 

5. The county board has also been able to consoli- 
date schools and transport the pupife; to improve 
buildings and sanitary conditions; to provide a uni- 
formly long term; to increase and standardize the 
salaries of the teachers throughout the county; to 
enforce the employment of good teachers for all 
schools; and to add new schools and new forms of 
instruction, where and as seemed desirable; — and all 
because of its control of the schools of the county as a 
unit. Their work has been exactly analogous to that of 
a city board of education for a city. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following is a small selected list of eighty titles, and 
contains only the more important of the recent literature 
bearing on the rural problem. No attempt is made to make it 
a comprehensive list, nor would such serve any useful pur- 
pose. Instead is submitted a short list, containing the more 
important books, pamphlets, and magazine articles which 
have appeared within recent years. Following this is a 
selected list of twenty books, such as would be desirable to 
supplement this one, and which can be obtained for an 
expenditure of $16.70. A selected list of fifteen free pam- 
phlets is also added. These lists will aid teachers, schools, 
and libraries in the purchase of other books on the subject. 



PART I. THE RURAL-LIFE PROBLEM 

1. The Rural Evolution 

1. BuTTERFiELD, K. L. Chapters in Rural Progress. 251pp. 

$1.00. University of Chicago Press, 1908. 
A good analysis of rural social progress. 

2. Carver, T. N. The Principles of Rural Economics. 

386 pp. $1.30. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1912. 

Deals in an interesting manner with the reasons for the 
cityward trend and the possibilities of the farm and country 
of the future, from the viewpoint of an economist. 

3. Childs, Rosa P. "Making Good Farmers out of Poor 

Ones"; in Review of Reviews, November, 1910. 6 pp. 

An account of Dr. Knapp's demonstration work among 
Southern farmers. An interesting popular account. 

4. HiBBARD, B. H. "Tenancy in the North Central 



350 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

States"; in Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 
1911. 20 pp. 

A good study of tenancy in these states. Gives the high 
price of land and the one-crop system as the chief factors in 
producing tenancy. 

5. Ross, J. B. "The Agrarian Revolution in the Middle 

West"; in North American Review, vol. 190, pp. 377-91 
(September, 1909). 

Sketches the great social changes taking place at present in 
the upper Mississippi Valley, and the effect of these changes 
on the institutions of rural society there. 

6. Wilson, W. H. The Evolution of the Country Community. 

221 pp. $1.25. The Pilgrim Press, Boston, 1912. 

Treats of rural social development, the pioneer, the land- 
exploiter, the husbandman, the religious life of each period, 
rural morality, recreation, and the graded school, from the 
point of view of the church. 

7. System of Tenant Farming, and its Results. Pamph., 5c. 

Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C. 
A study of the effects of tenant farming in the South. 

8. "Passing of the Man with the Hoe"; World's Work, 

August, 1910. 13 pp. 

A very interesting article on the agricultural changes 
wrought by the introduction of farm machinery. 

9. "Railroading Knowledge to Farmers"; World's Work, 

November, 1911. 7 pp. 

An illustrated article, describing an agricultural demon- 
stration train. 

2. The Rural Church 

10. AsHENHURST, J. O. The Day of the Country Church. 208 

pp. $1.00. Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1910. 
Contains an excellent chapter on leadership. 

11. BuTTERFiELD, K. L. The Country Church and the Rural 

Problem. 153 pp. $1.00. University of Chicago Press, 
1911. 

The task of the church and its relation to the rural problem 
is outlined. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 351 

12. FiSKE, G. W. The Challenge of the Country. 274 pp. 75c. 

The Y.M.C.A., Association Press, New York, 1912. 

A book on the rural problem, with special reference to the 
country church. Written at the request of the International 
Committee of the Y.M.CA. associations. 

13. McNuTT, M. B. "Ten Years in a Country Church"; 

in World's Work, December, 1910. 6 pp. 

A very interesting account of ten years of effort in a 
country parish in Illinois, and the results achieved. 

14. Nesmith, G. T. "The Problem of the Rural Community 

with special reference to the Rural Church"; in 
American Journal of Sociology, May, 1903. 26 pp. 

The condition of the rural church; community means for 
improvement. 

15. Symposium. "The Church and the Rural Community"; 

in American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911. 

16. Wilson, W.H. The Church of the Open Country. 283 pp. 

50c. Missionary Education Movement of the United 
States, New York, 1912. 

The place of the rural church in modern farming com- 
munities, and what changes must be effected if the church is 
to continue as a rural leader. The author is Secretary of 
Presbyterian missions. 

17. Wilson, W. H. "The Church and the Rural Commu- 

nity"; \n American Journal of Sociology, March, 1911. 
34 pp., including discussion. 
A paper along much the same lines as the above. 

3. Rural Life in general 

18. Anderson, W. L. Tlie Country Town. 307 pp. $1.00. 

The Baker and Taylor Co., New York, 1906. 

Contains good chapters on rural-life conditions and needs, 
rural degeneration and depletion, rural resources, and the 
rural church. 

19. Bailey, L.H. The Country -Life Movement. ^20 pp. $1.25. 

The Macmillan Co., New York, 1911. 

A consideration of the recent country-life movement. 



352 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

20. Bailey, L. H. The Training of Farmers. 263 pp. $1.00. 

The Century Company, New York, 1909. 

A discussion of the need and the means of training farmers 
for more successful agriculture and better living. 

21. Country Life Commission. Report. Q5 pp. Govern- 

ment Printing Office, 1909, 10c. Reprinted by Sturgis 
& Walton, New York, 75c. 

The report of President Roosevelt's Commission, outlining 
the problem and suggesting remedies, A very important 
document. 

22. Grayson,!). Adventures in Contentment. $1.20. Double- 

day, Page & Co., Garden City, L.L, 1907. 
Charming sketches of the delights of country life. 

23. Haggard, H. R. Rural Denmark and its Lessons. 335 pp. 

$2.25. Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1911. 

Describes the great rural transformation effected in Den- 
mark by agricultural education and cooperation among the 
farmers. 

24. Hart, J. K. Educational Resources of Village and Rural 

Communities. 277 pp. $1.00. The Macmillan Co., 
New York, 1913. 

A collection of 16 essays, by different authors, on dif- 
ferent phases of the rural-life problem. 

25. Hill, J. J. "What we must do to be fed"; in World's 

Work, November, 1909. 38 pp., illustrated. Reprinted 
as chapter i in his Highways of Progress, 1910. 
Emphasizes the importance of scientific agriculture. 

26. McKeever, W. A. Farm Boys and Girls. 326 pp. $1.25. 

The Macmillan Company, New York, 1912. 

A good book on rural home life, and the life interests of 
young people. 

27. Page, L. W. Roads, Paths, and Bridges. 263 pp. $1.00. 

Sturgis & Walton Co., New York, 1912. 

The best book on roads for farmers. Contains much 
useful information. 

28. Page, L. W. "Good Roads"; in World's Work, July, 

1909. 9 pp., illustrated. 

A short popular article, along the same lines as the above. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 353 

29. Plunkett, Sir H. The Rural-Life Problem of the United 

States. 174 pp. $1.25. The Macmillan Company, 
New York, 1910. 

Written by an authority on Irish and American agricul- 
ture. Deals largely with the life of the farmer, and the great 
need for business cooperation. 

30. Robertson, J. W. Conservation of Life in Rural Dis- 

tricts. 46 pp. 25c. The Y.M.C.A., Association Press, 
New York, 1911. 

31. Sims, N. L. A Hoosier Village. 181 pp. $1.50. Long- 

mans, Green & Co., 1912. 

A study of a town of 2500 people, with reference to the 
causes for its degeneration. In conclusion, says that not a 
single improvement in the village life has come from 
within. 

32. Sy^iposium. Annals of the American Academy of Political 

and Social Sciences. Philadelphia. Issue for March, 
1912, a special number on the rural problem, 243 pp. 
$1.00. 

A very important issue. Contains 28 valuable articles 
by well-known authorities, and dealing with almost every 
phase of the rural-life problem. 

33. Washington, Booker T. "How Denmark has taught 

itself Prosperity and Happiness"; in World's Work, 
June, 1911. 9 pp. 

Describes the rural high schools which have changed the 
whole nature of rural life in Denmark. 



4. Home Life 

34. Buell, Jennie. One Woman's Work for Farm Women. 

50c. Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston, 1908. 

Story of the life of Mary A. Mayo, a pioneer country-life 
leader in the Michigan Grange. 

35. DoDD, Mrs. Helen. The Healthful Farmhouse. 69 pp. 

60c. Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston, 2d ed., 1906. 

A good account of the actual remodeling of a farmhouse, 
by a farmer's wife. 



354 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

36. Davenport, Mrs. E. Possibilities of the Country Home. 

Bulletin, University of Illinois, Urbana. 

A very practical treatise, dealing with the water supply, 
lighting, heating, and beautifying of the farm home, and its 
costs. May be had on application. 

5. Rural Social Surveys 

37. Branson, E. C. The Georgia Club, 41 pp. Bulletin No. 

23, 1913, of the United States Bureau of Education. 
Describes the work done by the students at the state 
normal school at Athens, Ga., in the study of rural sociology. 

38. Galpin, C. J. Method of Making a Social Survey of a 

Rural Community. Giro. Inf. No. 29, University Wis- 
consin Agricultural Experiment Station. 11 pp. 
illustrated, 1912. 

A very good short outline, with maps, showing surveys. 
Distributed free. 

39. Morse, H. N., Eastman, E. F., and Monahan, A. C. 

An Educational Survey of a Suburban and Rural 

County. 68 pp., illustrated. 

Bulletin No. 32, 1913, of the United States Bureau of 
Education. A social and educational survey of Mont- 
gomery County, Md. 

40. Sharpleigh, F. E. Principles and Methods of Rural 

Surveys. The Y.M.C.A., Association Press, New- 
York, 1913. 

A detailed description of how to go to work, and what to 
do. 

41. Taft, Anna B. Community Study for Rural Districts. 

137 pp. 35c. Missionary Educational Movement for 
the United States, New York, 1912. 

Another outline, with directions for such studies, and 
charts. 

42. Wells, G. F. A Social Survey for Rural Communities. 

23 pp. 10c. Published by the author, 150 Fifth Ave- 
nue, New York, 1912. 

A syllabus outline of things to study. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 355 



PART II. THE RURAL-SCHOOL PROBLEM 

1. Needs in Rural Education 

43. Betts, G. H. New Ideals in Rural Schools. 128 pp. 60c. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1913. 

A short treatise on the school, its social relationships, the 
curriculum, and the teacher. 

44. Carney, Mabel. Country Life and the Country School. 

405 pp. $1.25. Row, Peterson & Co., Chicago, 1913. 
A very practical treatise on the rural-school problem. 

45. Cubberley, E. P. The Improvement of Rural Schools. 

76 pp. 35c. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1912. 

Treats the problem under the headings: The Problem; 
More Money; Better Organization; Better Supervision. 

46. Dresslar, F. B. Rural Schoolhouses. Bulletin of the 

United States Bureau of Education. 

Pictures and describes many good buildings. 

47. Eggleston, J. D., and Bruere, R. W. The Work of 

the Rural School. 283 pp., $1.00. Harper & Bros., New 
York, 1913. 

Considers the rural school as a factor in the upbuilding of 
the rural community, 

48. Fought, H. W. The American Rural School. 361 pp. 

$1.25. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1910. 

A good treatise on the rural-school problem, but chiefly 
along the lines of organization and the curriculum. 

49. Kern, O. J. Among Country Schools. 366 pp. $1.25. 

Ginn & Co., Boston, 1906. 

The first of the books on the rural school, and still quite 
useful. Describes many experiments. Well illustrated. 

50. MoNAHAN, A. C. Status of Rural Education in the 

United States. 73 pp. Bulletin No. 8, 1913, of the 
United States Bureau of Education. 

An excellent presentation of present conditions. 

51. Symposium. The Rural School as a Community Center. 



356 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Tenth Yearbook, Part ii, of the National Society for 
the Study of Education. 15 pp. 78c. University of 
Chicago Press, 1911. 

Contains a series of articles, by different authors, on rural- 
school extension, cooperation, libraries, community needs, etc. 

52. Seerley, Homer. The Country School. 218 pp. $1.00. 

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1913. 

A very general work, deaHng very briefly with almost 
every phase of rural-school work. 

S. Organization and Supervision of Rural Schools 

(Nearly all of the books listed above, under 1, treat of this topic 
also. In addition the following are worthy of special note.) 

53. Hays, W. M. Education for Country Life. Circular 84, 

Office of Experimental Stations, United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 

Points out the large possibilities of the consolidated school 
as a community center. 

54. Illinois. Consolidation of Country Schools. Bulletin, 

free. University of Illinois, Urbana. 

Contains the report of the special committee sent to inves- 
tigate the Ohio consolidated schools, with good summaries on 
the question of consolidating schools. 

55. Kern, O. J. "A New Kind of School"; in World's 

Work, September, 1908. 

Describes the John Swaney School, in Illinois, as a type of 
the consolidated school. 

56. Knorr, G. W. Consolidated Rural Schools, and the 

Organization of a County System. 99 pp. Bulletin 
232, Office of Experiment Stations, United States 
Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., 1910. 

An excellent bulletin on consolidation and the county unit. 
The best study of the subject so far published. Contains 
much valuable data as to costs, and many illustrations. 

57. Knorr, G. W. Study of Fifteen Consolidated Schools. 

Southern Education Board, Washington, D.C. 
Contains data as to organization, costs, and efficiency. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY S57 

58. Symposium. Supervision of Rural Schools. Twelfth 

Yearbook, Part ii, of the National Society for the 
Study of Education. 114 pp. 75c. University of 
Chicago Press, 1913. 

A series of contributed articles, dealing with different 
phases of the problem of supervision of rural schools. Also 
contains a good bibliography on school supervision. 

59. True, A. C. Some Problems of the Rural Common School; 

in 1901 Yearbook of the United States Department of 
Agriculture. 22 pp. Reprinted separately, for free 
distribution. 

A good brief statement of the present conditions and the 
advantages of consolidation. 

60. Wisconsin, Conditions and Needs of the Rural Schools of. 

92 pp. 12c. Training School for Public Service, New 
York. Also printed by the Wisconsin State Board of 
Public Affairs. 

The results of a field study of the rural schools of parts of 
Wisconsin, and of the supervision of them. 

S. The Curriculum 
(See also Betts, Kern, and Fought, under 1, above.) 

61. Brown, H. A. The Readjustment of a Rural High School 

to the Needs of the Community. 31 pp., illustrated. 
Bulletin No. 20, 1912, United States Bureau of Edu- 
cation, Washington, D.C. 

Describes how Colebrook Academy, New Hampshire, was 
redirected. 

62. Crosby, D. J., and Crocherton, B. H. Community 

Work in the Rural High School. 12 pp. In Yearbook, 
United States Department of Agriculture, 1910. Also 
reprinted separately for free distribution. 

Describes the community work done in the agricultural 
high school of Baltimore County, Maryland. 

63. Crocherton, B. H. "A Very Real Country School"; in 

World's Work, January, 1912. 10 pp., illustrated. 

Describes the establishment and extension work of this 
same Baltimore County high school. 



358 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

64. Davenport, E. Education for Efficiency. 184 pp. $1.00. 

D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1909. 

A discussion of what constitutes efficient education, and 
the place of agriculture in an educational system. 

65. Gates, Fr. T. "The Country School of To-morrow"; in 

World's Work, August, 1912. 

Outlines the way in which the rural school must be re- 
directed. 

66. Howe, F. W. Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs. 23 pp., 

illustrated. Farmers' Bulletin, No. 385, United States 
Department of Agriculture, 1910. 

Describes the work, and gives a list of publications of the 
Department relating to the work. 

67. Jewell, J. R. Agricultural Education, Including Nature 

Study and School Gardens. 140 pp. Bulletin No. 2, 
1907, United States Bureau of Education. 
A careful consideration of the curriculum. 

68. Johnson, A. A. County Schools of Agriculture and 

Domestic Economy in Wisconsin, 24 pp. Bulletin No. 
242, Office of Experimental Stations, United States 
Department of Agriculture, 1911. 

Describes the kind of work done in a number of these 
schools. 

69. Johnson, C. Old-Time Schools and School Books. 381 pp. 

$2.00, illustrated. The Macmillan Company, New 
York, 1904. 

A good description of the old-time district school, and its 
work. 

70. N. E. A. Report of the Committee on Industrial Education 

in Schools for Rural Communities. In Report of Pro- 
ceedings, N. E. A., 1905. Also reprinted separately, 
10c. For sale by the Association. 

A useful report, dealing with the possibilities of agricul- 
tural education in one-room schools. 

71. N. E. A. Report of the Committee on Courses of Study in 

Agriculture. In Report of Proceedings, N. E. A., 1912, 
pp. 1391-1413. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 359 

A very useful report, outlining many practical courses 
for different types of schools. 

72. Robinson, C. H., and Jenks, F. B. Agricultural Instruc- 

tion in High Schools. 80 pp. Bulletin No. 6, 1913, 
United States Bureau of Education. 

Discusses types of schools, salaries of teachers, and kinds 
of instruction provided. 

73. ScuDDER, M. T. Field Day and Play Picnics for Country 

Children. Bulletin, Charities Publication Committee, 
New York. 10c. 

Describes how to organize and conduct such. 

4. The Teacher 

74. Bailey, L. H. On the Training of Persons to teach Agri- 

culture in the Public Schools. 53 pp. Bulletin No. 1, 
1908, United States Bureau of Education. 

Discusses the nature of the problem, and the means of 
training teachers for rural ser\ace. 

75. Field, Jessie. The Corn Lady. 107 pp. 50c. A. Flana- 

gan Company, Chicago, 1911. 

A series of letters from a country teacher to her father, 
describing her work in transforming a rural school. Should be 
read by every rural teacher. The appendix contains some 
very good farm-arithmetic problems. 

76. MoNAHAN, A. C, and Wright, R. H. Training Courses 

for Rural Teachers. 61 pp. Bulletin No. 2, 1913, 
United States Bureau of Education. 

Describes what is being done in the different states in the 
matter of preparing teachers for the rural schools. 

77. Mutchler, F., and Craig, W. J. A Course of Study for 

the Preparation of Rural-School Teachers. 23 pp. 
Bulletin No. 1, 1912, United States Bureau of Educa- 
tion. 

Outlines a course of study for rural teachers. 

78. Wray, Angelina. Jean MitchelVs School. $1.00. 

Public School Publishing Co., Bloomington, Illinois, 
1902. 



360 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A charming story of a country teacher's experience, and of 
a kind which young teachers could read with profit. 

5. Two Useful Bibliographies 

79. Bibliography of Education in Agriculture and Home 

Economics. 62 pp. Bulletin No. 10, 1912, United 
States Bureau of Education. Free. 

80. Free Publications of the United States Department of 

Agriculture, Classified for the Use of Teachers. 35 pp. 
Circular 94, Office of Experiment Stations, United 
States Department of Agriculture. Free. 



SELECTED LIST OF TWENTY BOOKS FOR 
PURCHASE 



No. 



Author 



1. butterfield, k. l. 

2. Carver, T. N. 
6. Wilson, W. H. 

11. butterfield, k. l. 

12. FiSKE, G. W. 

16. Wilson, W. H. 

18. Anderson, W. L. 

19. Bailey, L. H. 

21. Country Life Com- 
mission. 
24. Hart, J. K. 

26. McKeever, W. a. 
32. Symposium. 



35. DoDD, Helen. 

48. Fought, H. W. 

49. Kern, O. J. 
51. Symposium. 



Title Retail 
Price 
Chapters in Rural Progress. $1.00 
Principles of Rural Economics. 1 .30 
Evolution of the Country Com- 
munity. 1.25 
Country Church and the Rural 

Problem. 1.00 

Challenge of the Country. .10 

Church of the Open Country. .50 

The Country Town. 1.00 

The Country-Life Movement. 1.25 

Report. .10 
Educational Resources of Vil- 
lage and Rural Communities. 1.00 
Farm Boys and Girls. 1.25 
Annals of the American Acad- 
emy of Political and Social 
Sciences, March, 1912. 1.00 
The Healthful Farmhouse. .60 
American Rural School. 1.25 
Among Country Schools. 1.25 
Rural School as Community 
Center. .75 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



361 



58. Symposium. 
70. N. E. A. 



75. 

78. 



Field, Jessie. 
Wbay, Angelina. 



Supervision of Rural Schools. 
Report of Committee on Indus- 
trial Education. 
The Corn Lady. 
Jean Mitchell's School. 
Total cost, at retail price, $16.70 



.75 

.10 

.50 

1.00 



SELECTED LIST OF FIFTEEN FREE PAMPHLETS 



37. Branson, E. C. 

38. Galpin, C. J. 

39. Morse, Eastman, and 

M ON AH AN. 

46. Dresslar, F. B. 

50. MONAHAN, A. C. 

53. Hays, W. M. 
56. Knorr, G. W. 

59. True, A. C. 

61. Brown, H. A. 

66. Howe, F. W. 

67. Jewell, J. R. 

72. Robinson and Jenks. 
74. Bailey, L. H. 

76. MoNAHAN and Wright. 

77. MuTCHLEB and Craig. 



The Georgia Club. 

Making a Social Survey of a Rural 

Community. 
Survey of a Rural County. 

Rural Schoolhouses. 

Status of Rural Education in the 

United States. 
Education for Country Life. 
Consolidated Rural Schools, and a 

County System. 
Some Problems of the Rural Common 

School. 
Readjustment of a Rural High School. 
Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs. 
Agricidtural Education, including 

Nature Study. 
Agricultural Instruction in High 

Schools. 
On Training to teach Agriculture in 

Schools. 
Training Courses for Rural Teachers. 
Course of Study for Rural Teachers. 



OTHER PAMPHLETS AND REPORTS 

In nearly all of the states, special bulletins have been 
issued on one or more phases of the rural-school problem, 
and some of these are quite valuable. No attempt has been 
made to list such here, but the Report of the State Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, and such Bulletins as may- 
have been issued by the state, ought to be added. The 



362 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Annual Reports of the Secretary of Agriculture for the 
United States also contain, from time to time, useful articles. 
In addition the two following monthly magazines contain 
many articles of value : — 

World's Work. A Monthly Illustrated Magazine/ $3.00 
per year. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, L.I. 
This magazine contains many articles relating to farm life 
and rural education, and, besides being an excellent general 
magazine, is of particular value to those who are interested 
in rural life and education. 

Rural Manfiood. A Monthly Illustrated Magazine. 
$1.00 per year. International Committee, Y.M.C.A., 
New York. 

Devoted to the country work of the Y.M.C.A. Contains 
much that is valuable relating to rural life. 



INDEX 



Administration and organiza- 
tion of schools, 178-93. 

Agriculture: — Instruction in 
rural schools, 268-71, 296; na- 
tional aid for, 37; new, 36-37; 
future demands on, 44; re- 
organization and commercial- 
izing of, 36-51; U.S. Dept. of, 
38, 39, 155-58. 

Agricultural colleges, 38. 

Agricultural clubs, boys and 
girls, 144-46; Clinton County, 
Iowa, 156-59. 

Agricultural expansion, great 
American, 18-21, 22-24, 41- 
43. 

Agricultural development, four 
periods of: — I. Up to 1830, 
7-13; II. 1830-60, 14-18; III. 
1860-90, 18-28; IV. 1890 on, 
29-61. 

Arithmetic, redirection of in- 
struction in, 260-61. 

Automobiles on farms, 64. 

Away-from-f arm-influence in ed- 
ucation, 260-61. 

Back-to-land movement, 169. 

Baltimore Co., Md., County 
unit in, 321-23, 339-47. 

Barley, new seed, 39. 

Bathroom conveniences, 34. 

Bibliography on rural problems, 
349-60. 

" Boarding-around " arrange- 
ments, 88. 

Boy-Scouts, rural, 144. 

Buildings, school, 207-16; con- 
solidated school interiors, 253, 
328-38; fundamental needs in, 



212-16; typical interiors, 207- 
12; special rooms, 215. 

Camp-Fire Girls, rural, 144. 

Church : — A rural, reorganized, 
132-37; a village, reorganized, 
137-39; as a community cen- 
ter, 121-23; early social as- 
pect of, 76-78; large early in- 
fluence, 72-74; the teacher and, 
81-82; effect of changes on, 
71-81; social mission of, 80. 

Churches: — Too many, 77-78; 
an overchurched township, 78; 
dying churches, 76-79. 

Cities, gradual rise of, 8, 25. 

City and country schools com- 
pared, 221. 

City connections formed, 65. 

Cityward migration, the, 24-26. 

Clinton County, Iowa, commer- 
cial club plan, 156-59. 

Commerce, rise of, 16. 

Commercial clubs aiding farm- 
ers, 155-59. 

Commercial large-scale farming, 
45-46. 

Commercial small-scale farming, 
46-47. 

Community centers, 117-26; pos- 
sible, 118-25; one plan for, 
119; the church as a, 121-23; 
the library as a, 124; the 
school as a, 125. 

Community-center schools, 251- 
54; floor-plans for, 253. 

Community life, 126, 158. 

Community rural service, 126. 

Consolidation movement, 203 ; 
inaugurating the same, 240. 



364 



INDEX 



Consolidation of schools, 230- 
55, 328-38; advantages of, 
235-38; disadvantages of, 239- 
40; district consolidation, 240- 
43; township consolidation, 
243-44; county-unit plan, 
245-49, 321-26; state reorgan- 
ization, 255; in Illinois, 334- 
38; in Indiana, 231, 242; in 
Ohio, 232-34. 

Consolidated schools : — A one- 
room school in Missouri, 328- 
34; a good example in Illinois, 
334-38. 

Country-life Commission, the, 
169. 

Country-life movement, mean- 
ing of, 128. 

County board of education, 322- 
26, 339-47. 

County school superintendent. 
{See Superintendent; Superin- 
tendency.) 

County system, the, of school 
administration, 190-92, 245- 
49, 339-47. 

County taxation for education, 
198-200. 

County unit in evolution, 307. 

Curriculum: — The old, 256-66, 
275-76; need of redirecting, 
267-68, 275-78; new one 
needed for rural school, 256- 
81, 296; for rural high school, 
278-80. 

Distribution of taxation for edu- 
cation, systems of, 201-02. 

District school: — Origin of, 83- 
85; multiplication of districts, 
163-65, 181-83, 226-29; de- 
cline of, 164-66. 

District system, 86-88, 178-86, 
221-25; essential features of, 
178-86; objections to, 184- 
86, 220-30, 285-87. 

District taxation, 194-97. 

Domestic science, instruction in, 
271-73, 298, 343. 



Education, early, 83-89; changes 
in after 1870, 89-96; increas- 
ing cost of, 99-100; increasing 
term, 101; present inade- 
quacy, 97; what constitutes, 
280-81. 

Educational reorganization need- 
ed, 172-75, 203, 224. 

Equalizing effect of general taxa- 
tion, 199-201. 

Erie Canal, 16. 

Expansion, agricultural, 18-21, 
22-24. 

Experts, farm, 155-59. 

Farm experts, 155-59; hands, 
26, 60; labor, saving in, 26- 
28; managers, 46; tenantry, 
51-61; values, 23, 30, 43, 67. 

Farmer, home-builder type, 22. 

Farmer, town and travel habit, 
65-66. 

Farmers, agricultural courses 
for, 70. 

Farmers' organizations, 149-59. 

Farmers' Institutes, 154-55. 

Farmhouses, newer, 33-35. 

Farming: — Commercial, 14; 
conditions in fifteen states, 
30; population, 30; subsist- 
ence stage, 10-14. 

Farms, development of, 19, 20, 
24; free, given away, 19; size 
of, 30. 

First period in agricultural de- 
velopment, 7-13; characteris- 
tics of the period, 7-13. 

Florida, Duval County, consoli- 
dation, in, 245. 

Foodstuffs, recent values of, 42. 

Fourth period in agricultural 
development, 29-61; charac- 
teristics of the period, 31; 
changes involved, 60-61; ef- 
fect on school, 94-97. 

Furnaces in homes, 34. 

Geography, instruction in, 262- 
64. 



INDEX 



365 



Georgia, Black counties in, 48. 
Government, local, 68-71. 
Grading of schools, 90. 
Grammar and language, instruc- 
tion in, 261, 262. 
Grange, the, 124, 149-52, 302. 

Harlem, consolidated school, 

324-28. 
Hesperia Movement, the, 152- 

53. 
High school, rural: — Redirec- 
tion of, 278-80; teacher in, 

300-01. 
History, instruction in, 265-66. 
Home and school, 18. 
Home-builder farmer, 22. 
Home life, early, 11, 18. 
Homes, early farm, 11; need for 

better, 115-17; present farm 

homes, 33-35. 
Hygiene, instruction in, 264-65, 

296. 

Idaho, Ada County, reorgan- 
ized, 249-50. 

Immigrants: — Early types, 
15-16; later types, 54-59; 
land ownership by, 107; teach- 
ing agriculture to, 70. 

Indiana, Delaware County, con- 
solidation in, 242. 

Institutes, farmers', 154-55. 

Institutional church, an, 135-37. 

Instruction: — In rural school, 
256-81; in rural high school, 
278-80. 

Intellectual revolution, the, 74- 
76. 

Intensive farming, 46. 

Interiors of building, school, 
207-16; a model building, 214; 
a reorganized school, 211. 

Inventions: — New,15-16; labor- 
saving, 26-28. 

Kirksville, Missouri, rural 

school, 328-34. 
Kitchens, farm, 116. 



Language and grammar, in- 
struction in, 261-63. 

Library: — Rural, 124, 146-49; 
school, 220-21; Ubrary work, 
297. 

Living: — Early, 10-14, 18; 
third-period characteristics, 22; 
fourth-period changes, 31-35. 

Local government amid the 
change, 68-71. 

Machinery, new farming, 15, 89. 

Magazines in the farm home, 33, 
64. 

Mail, rural delivery, 33. 

Maintenance of schools, types of, 
193-204. 

Manual training, instruction in, 
273, 298, 343. 

Manufacturing, rise of, 16. 

Markets, early, 9, 11; new, 14, 
40-41. 

Maryland, county unit of ad- 
ministration in, 321-23, 339- 
47. 

Migrations, early Westward, 9. 

Minnesota, Douglas County, 
reorganized, 246-48, 323-25. 

Mississippi Valley: — An agri- 
cultural center, 30-31; town 
movement in, 36; towns lack- 
ing in personality in, 102. 

Missouri, Kirksville consolidated 
school, 328-34. 

Model rural school buildings, 
214, 253, 328-38. 

Morrill Land-Grant Bill, 37. 

National aid for agriculture, 37. 

Nature study, instruction in, 
268-71, 296. 

Negro farmers, 48, 50, 59. 

Neighborhood clubs, 158-59. 

New England influence on relig- 
ious life, 71-72. 

New interest in rural life, 65. 

Newspapers in farm homes, 33, 
64. 

Nursing, district, 139. 



366 



INDEX 



Ohio, consolidation of schools 
in, 230-34, 241. 

Ohio, township supervision of 
schools in, 312. 

Organization and administra- 
tion of schools, types of, 178- 
93. 

Outlook, larger rural, 114. 

Ownership of land, 61, 107. 

Periods of agricultural develop- 
ment. {See Agricultural de- 
velopment.) 

Personality, the school and, 113. 

Personality, retention of, on 
farms, 112-13. 

Pioneer life, early, 10. 

Plainfield, Illinois, reorganized 
rural church, 132-37. 

Play, organized, instruction in, 
274. 

Population and production, rela- 
tive increases in, 27. 

Population, rapid growth of ur- 
ban, 8, 25. 

Professional preparation for 
teaching, 289-99. 

Railways, early, 16-17. 

Reading, instruction in, 266-67. 

Redirecting the school, 172, 174. 

Redirected schools: — A rural, 
328-34; a consolidated, 334-38. 

Rural economic interests, 108. 

Rural human interests, 109. 

Rural library, 124, 146-49, 297. 

Rural life: — Early, 11; to-day, 
32-35; great rural interests, 
173; movement, the recent, 
169; needs to-day, 104, 110, 
297; educational deficiency in, 
105. 

Rural population, 8, 25, 111; by 
states, 49; decreases in, 50-51. 

Rural school. {See School.) 

Rural school progress, funda- 
mental needs for, 203-04, 

Rural social life, 63-68, 297. 

Rural social problem, 106, 297. 



Rural teacher: — Training of, 
289-99; high school teacher, 
300-01; possibilities for large 
service, 301-04, 

Science, domestic, instruction 
in, 271-73, 298. 

Science room in schools, 215. 

School: — Origin of, 83-85; the 
early, 88, 177; second-period 
school, 86-88; city-school in- 
fluence on, 92; changes in 
direction after 1870, 90- 
95; amid the fourth-period 
changes, 94-97, 164-72; typical 
early interiors, 84, 86; costs, 
increasing, 94-101; district, 
decline of, 163-67; library, 
220-21; sites, 216-18; super- 
vision. {See Supervision, Su- 
perintendency) ; term, increas- 
ing, 101. 

School and democracy, 163, 320. 

School and home, 18. 

School and personality, 113. 

School buildings : — types and 
needs of, 207-16; typical in- 
teriors, 207-12; fundamental 
needs of, 212-16; special 
rooms in, 215; consolidated, 
328-38. 

Schoolmaster, the early, 88, 

Schools, rural : — Not of neces- 
sity poor, 167; recent criti- 
cism of, 168; redirecting them, 
172-75, 328-38; fundamental 
needs of, for progress, 203-04; 
present plight of, 102, 164-67. 

School systems and evolution, 
178. 

Second period in agricultural de- 
velopment, 14-18. 

Second-period school, 86-88. 

Seed selection, 39. 

Sites, school, 216-18. 

Size of farms, 30. 

Social work for the church, 122. 

Society, early rural, 63-65; 
changes in, 65-68. 



INDEX 



367 



Specialization, farm and crop, 
15. 

Stock-breeding, 39. 

Subsistence farming, 10-14. 

Sunday, early, social signifi- 
cance of, 64. 

Superintendency, county : — In 
evolution, 308; new concep- 
tions of the office, 309-11; 
present conditions in the office, 
315-20; the way out, 319-20, 
346-47. 

Supervision, rural, 306-26, 339- 
47; same under county sys- 
tem, 321-26; under county 
board of education, 322-25; 
present type of, 313-21 ; town- 
ship, in Ohio, 312; county, at 
present, 311. 

System, district. {See District 
system.) 

Taxation for education, forms of, 
193-204; distribution of, 201- 
02. 

Teacher: — The early, 88; de- 
crease in men, 91; new rural 
type needed, 90-93, 283-304; 
teacher and the church prob- 
lem, 81, 302. 

Teacher, rural: — Call for serv- 
ice from, 301-04; training 
and w^ages compared, 283-88; 
present status of training, 288; 
in rural high schools, 300-01. 

Teachers' training classes, 289- 
99; beginnings of, 289-90; 
development of, in Nebraska, 



291; instruction offered, 292- 
99; suggested course, 295-99. 

Teaching equipment, 206-25; 
special equipment needed, 
218-20. 

Telephone and the farmer, 32. 

Tenantry, farm, 51-61; in the 
United States, 51; in each 
state, 53; increase in, 52; ten- 
antry vs. ownership, 107; ten- 
antry and social life, 66-68. 

Tenants, new, and local govern- 
ment, 69. 

Third period in agricultural de- 
velopment, 18-28. 

Town movement of farmers, 36. 

Town or township system, 186- 
90. 

Town system, the New England, 
187. 

Town vs. district control, 188. 

Township, the Western, 189. 

Town and township taxation, 
197-98. 

Trading, early markets, 13. 

Trains, agricultural, 39. 

Travel, farmers enjoying, 66. 

Utah, county-unit plan in, 213- 
23. 

Workroom in the rural school, 
211, 214, 215. 

Y.M.C.A., county-work divi- 
sion, 123, 124, 138-43, 302. 

Y.W.C.A., county-work divi- 
sion, 123, 124, 142-44, 302. 



